Lady Errant
by happy accident
Summary: So this is sacrifice, he realized belatedly. Can you give her up to have her back again? Ash has a few lessons to learn about holding on and letting go.
1. A Whole New World

**Lady Errant**

Ash stood in the deep basin that had once been San Francisco Bay. Above him, late evening traffic passed for the most part indifferently by, but he could sense that a few dozen pedestrians and even a car or two had stopped to gawk at him. Turning with barely traceable speed, he caught them with his most malicious glare, the kind that was known to freeze helpless bunnies in mid-leap. The majority of the humans scattered like a flock of starlings startled into flight, but a handful met his gaze with contempt of their own. It was unnerving, to say the least, having humans look at him and know him for what he was. They never would have done that before the War.

Before the War, only Mary-Lynnette would have met his unspoken challenge like that.

He turned his back purposefully on his remaining audience, shouldering the encroaching thoughts coldly aside. His eyes wandered the slopes of the mountains in front of him that had risen to separate the city from the Pacific. Iliana had done that; the tiny white-blonde Witch Child who couldn't have swatted a fly to save her life, had moved an ocean to save the world. Somewhere beyond the lumbering peaks lay an army of dragons, sleeping hidden beneath the surging sea. Sleeping, not dead. The danger was passed, not gone.

He hadn't actually been here to see the Wild Power at work, but he had heard enough stories from the survivors to piece together a mental picture of the petite figure silhouetted against a violet dawn, hands raised imploringly to the sky, an invisible breeze picking up strands of baby-fine hair. At that exact moment he would have been somewhere not too far away, but far beyond any sight of the open sky. He would have been with Mary-Lynnette.

The skin on the back of his neck prickled unpleasantly, and a small, suppressed instinct was counseling strongly that he should be moving. Both feelings he attributed to the eyes watching him, and he drove them roughly into the farthest corner of his conscious. Allowing himself one hasty glance over his shoulder, he wondered briefly if Mary-Lynnette would mind if he hated humans, just a little bit, just for a minute or two. But no, that wouldn't have gone over well. Besides, that Ash no longer existed. He simply wasn't capable of that kind of blind, ignorant loathing anymore.

_No, I know what real hatred is. The kind that eats away at your insides, twisting its way into every thought, keeping you up at night. Especially when it's turned against yourself._

There had been three sides to the War. Lord Thierry and his ragtag group of Daybreakers had spent countless hours preparing for the Millennium battle with the Night World, but they were caught unawares by the creation of a new faction. Those humans who hadn't supported Circle Daybreak or--surprisingly--the Night World Council had formed their own militia, fueled by their fear and hatred of all the strange new creatures that had appeared in their once well-organized world.

She hadn't told him directly, but he had sensed Mary-Lynnette had been proud to be chosen by Thierry as Circle Daybreak's ambassador of good will to the newfound opposition. She wasn't suited to fighting or killing, and the position instilled her with a feeling of _usefulness _in the midst of an increasingly military operation. He had known that, and Thierry had known that, and Ash had been certain to quietly and secretly gift the made vampire with a token of his appreciation. Ash had insisted on accompanying Mary-Lynnette not because of--or not only because of--his inherent protectiveness of his soulmate, but because he had something to prove. He had wanted so badly the opportunity to show her how much he had changed his views of the world, for her, for both of them.

She had overestimated human compassion for their own kind. He had underestimated the strength and cruelty of human terror. They had been ambushed by the radicals of the group, captured, and tortured for information. Sun lamps were set up in the cramped, dank cell they were allotted to deprive them both of sleep and to hinder his vampire abilities; they had been wounded, physically and psychologically; they had been starved to the brink of death. Half-blind, singed, and nearly mad with hunger, he had given up hope of either of them living to see the end of the war.

_War is hell. Ha. That's not the half of it._

_"Ash."_ Her voice was an echo in his mind brought to him by the whistle of the wind crossing the cliffs over his head, only a sliver of memory, but it was enough to make his breath catch. _"Ash." _

_"I'm offering it to you freely, Ash."_

_"What if I offered you my blood? You need it much more than I do. I'm the immortal one, remember?"_

_"Semi-immortal," she corrected. "Not invincible. You still need to feed. And I happen to be, well, _prey_."_

_"Stop it. Mary-Lynnette--"_

_"Don't you get it yet? I do this, or neither of us leaves alive."_

_"Fine. I can live with that."_

_"The point is, you won't _live_ with it because you'll be dead. Dead _dead_. Vampires don't come back, idiot. _Poof. _'Out, out brief candle,' and all that. I at least have some chance of coming back."_

_One fierce explosion of breath, "_No._ Absolutely not. Give me time to think of something, and I'll get us both out of here." It was worthless bravado, and they both knew it._

_"We don't have that kind of time." He didn't dare look over at her, afraid to see what he already knew was there. She was little more than translucent skin stretched taunt over razor-sharp bones. She wouldn't live through another 'interrogation.' "You don't even have the power to contact Thierry or Quinn telepathically. No help is coming until this battle's over. _I_ can give you that power, I can change that. Now's no time to be valiant and brave and…and pig-headed. We have to face facts. You have to live. And I--" her voice wobbled, the first sign of weakness on her part, and it was not overlooked. "I'll be back."_

_"What, no Shakespeare, no Austen? You have to quote _The Terminator_ at a time like this?" _

_"I'm tired. I don't want to fight. Not now. Not anymore." His heart broke, just a little, a small fissure in a very, very long process._

_He wanted to hold her, but the wooden shackles around his wrists prevented him from any such thing. Instead he settled for sliding himself as near to her as he could manage, every curve of her body fitting alongside his so it was impossible to tell there were two people there at all, only one. As he moved, new scars stretched and broke open where they had burned him. He covered his pain by projecting images of his arms around her through the link they shared._

_"I love you," he whimpered, suddenly very small. His voice was bleak in the empty, blindingly lit room. "Don't leave me."_

_"'Were a star quenched on high, for ages would its light still traveling downward from the sky, shine on our mortal sight. So when a great _wo_man dies, for years beyond our ken, the light _she_ leaves behind _her_ lies upon the paths on men.' Longfellow. "_

_"That's not comforting."_

_"You asked for a quote, not comfort." But she gave it to him anyway._

_"Now?" she asked after too little time. She held her head high and her voice steady with all the dignity of a biblical martyr, staring him in the eye with a gaze he couldn't meet._

_So this is sacrifice, he realized belatedly. Can you give her up to have her back again? The answer was an unmistakable _never_, but the truth was that after so much deprivation, his body dictated of all his actions now. His canines, already lengthened to sharp, delicate tips, jabbed his bottom lip and throbbed agonizingly. His vision narrowed to the pulse beating in her veins even as his senses expanded to their super-sensitive apex. Positioning themselves was an excruciating experience, and bound hand-to-foot they knelt facing each other on the filthy floor, staring breathless with the effort of their movement._

_"You're taking too long," she accused, just as he lunged unsteadily forward for her throat. _

_She gasped involuntarily, and an abrupt squeezing pressure in his chest forced him to pull his dive up short. To cover his hesitation, he kissed the junction of her neck and shoulder, easing his lips slowly, sensually up her skin until she relaxed against him, heading turning instinctively at the right angle to bare her throat to him. And then he bit her. It hurt him more than it did her._

_Their minds merged completely, two drops of water melting into each other._

Sorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorry_, his thoughts ran the same path with unflagging persistence._

Shut up, Ash. You're ruining the moment.

_He reached for her essence, but she was already there, her thoughts blazing meteors that lit up the space they shared. He felt the faint flickers of her emotions, fear, pain, exhaustion, and overwhelming love. _

Yes,_ her voice echoed in a way it never had before, like from a long way off. _Love. I love you. So don't think I'm going to let you get away so easy, Ash Redfern.

_Love. He clung to that, recovering his self-control and caging away the animal he had unleashed. Her physical body was leaning heavily against his chest, her head slumping down as he released her, her breathing disturbingly shallow. But still breathing, blood still pumping weakly through her veins._

_He sent an inquiring tendril of thought out, farther and farther away until he encountered a familiar presence. _Quinn.__

_The mind recoiled from his with a mixture of shock and disbelief. _Please, don't!,_ he shouted after it._

Ash?

Help. _Already the connection between them was fading, the little power he had gained winking out._ _An indistinguishable affirmation came from the other vampire just before the link snapped, but it didn't matter. Quinn was too far away. There wasn't nearly enough time._

It was just four days short of her twentieth birthday.

That was about the time his world ended, even while outside a new day was dawning on San Francisco, an entirely new world. The War didn't last more than three days after that, and when the humans called for a ceasefire, he was delivered back to Thierry as part of the conditions. He had refused to let anyone but Thea touch his soulmate, guarding her like a bulldog, which had nearly driven Hannah to hysterics. But he hadn't had much sanity left at that point, and he'd been entitled to a pointless mandate or two. They took him home, as much as the Las Vegas mansion was home, and confined him in his suite for his own good over several weeks. He only saw Hannah, Thea, or Poppy when they came to coerce blood and strange concoctions down his throat, nursing him slowly, reluctantly back to health. Thea told him much later that she had done everything she could for Mary-Lynnette, but…But no healer, no witch can revive the dead. Not even when it's the woman who set you on the path to salvation. Not even when she's your reason for existence.

His first night back he heard the entire inner circle gathered on the floor beneath his prison, celebrating their hard-won victory, laughing, arguing, crying some, and discussing the points of the new treaty to be drawn up with the humans. But he knew there was no victory, there never would be. Late that night, Thierry had stolen away from the festivities long enough to visit him for a few minutes, a silent swab of night keeping vigil over his sickbed. His eyes were hard to make out in the darkness, but when the moon hit them at the right angle, the look in them…Ash was sure that he understood his thoughts.

It had taken time to prove just how right he was. Danger had never left them, it had only changed hands, changed faces. It wasn't so much a new world, but the old one in new skin. The silent tyranny of the Night World had been replaced by the open resistance of small pockets of humans, even now, two decades after the War. There were more vampire hunters since the existence of Night People had become common knowledge, but vampire hunter wasn't the right word anymore; they hunted all types--vampires, 'shifters, 'wolves, they were even known to burn a witch every once in awhile. And the Night People weren't completely satisfied with the 'new' world either. There were those that resented the way humans treated them and called up memories of how the Night World Council had tried to protect them from exactly the violence they were daily confronted with. There were those that were trying to resurrect the Night World.

That was his job now. To gather information on those people for Thierry, to foil their attempts, to hunt them down. It was the least he could do in exchange for the space he took up in his and Lady Hannah's house. The rest of the inner circle had all filtered out into the world, organizing local chapters of Circle Daybreak or simply starting their own lives. He was the last one left.

He shoulders blades were tingling now in a fiercer version of the prickling warning his neck had been giving him about the watchers above him, and it was a much more difficult intuition to push aside this time. He swung around, only to see a vacant ledge overhead. His spectators had apparently deserted him when he had failed to do anything more remarkable than stare at the skyline. He shook himself to discard the feeling, the skin on his back rippling like an animal's pelt.

A week ago he had given a half-truthful excuse to Thierry about a lamia rallying supporters in San Francisco. Of course Hannah had seen straight through him, and his friend had given him odd looks and sad smiles as she insisted on helping him choose a few clothes to pack. There had been pity there, too. The one thing he couldn't stand from either of them, the reason why he barely spent anytime in Las Vegas anymore. She knew that Poppy had sent him another message about a premonition she'd had. But Poppy had been sending him similar messages for over seventeen years, and it only upset all of them--Ash, Poppy, and Hannah--when they failed to come true. And when Poppy was troubled on his account, he and James were not on good terms. Thierry was the only one that remained stoic about it all; after all, he had waited thousands of years for his soulmate. What was a decade or two?

If Mary-Lynnette was coming back at all. _If. _For all his hopes over the years, he had never actually believed she would. She had an impressive stubborn streak, but he doubted even she had the force of will to compel herself back into a living body. And the way Gillian had spoken reverently once or twice, he suspected she wouldn't relinquish a place like that for a ne'er-do-well scoundrel like him.

Mary-Lynnette. It came full circle again. He had left Las Vegas to outrun his memories of her, but they were more unavoidable than his shadow. That was the curse of soulmates; you could get along just fine in life until you found yours, but after that there was no thought that didn't incorporate them, no day that could be lived fully without them. His life was dedicated to her, a sacred offering, dead as she was.

The warning trickled down into his stomach, turning it with a sickening sensation that was something akin to the nauseating plunge you experience upon finding yourself in mid-air. He growled his irritation at this unbidden part of himself surfacing. He knew very well that there was no threat behind and above him. _No, not danger…_The thought was hard to distinguish in the pink haze of his anger, but he clung to it tenaciously, sure he was missing some important piece of the puzzle.

_Pink. Oh, Goddess. I don't even _like_ the color pink._

His feet were in motion before his mind registered the thought, quickly scaling the nearly sheer wall in front of him back to the crowded streets above. Sun-baked earth crumbled into his hair, his clothes, but he didn't bother to brush it away, not even when he stood on solid ground again. He heeded the direction of the wrenching between his ribs, nearly running now along the new sidewalk that paralleled the path of the freshly paved road. Everything in this portion of the city was new, given that the original had been almost completely demolished during the War and the looting afterward. But the population had moved cautiously back in within a few years, rebuilding homes and businesses, remaking their lives anew from the ashes. Humanity was an incredibly resilient entity. And at the moment, humanity was greeting him with a few pointed glares and rude gestures as it parted reluctantly before his obstinate search. He never saw them; his entire focus was on the electricity tickling his spine, the tug in the pit of his stomach.

_Who? Where?_

There. Standing in the middle of his path, people flowing by on either side of her like a stream parting for stone, her feet firmly planted a shoulder-length apart, her hands resting in fists on her hips. It occurred to him unexpectedly how perfect she was. Just the perfect height so that her chin could rest comfortably in the crook of his neck, but not so far apart in stature that she couldn't look him in the eye when she needed to, so he never had to stoop to touch his lips to hers. Her hair was longer, swirling in a dark cloud around her shoulders; it was the style among teenagers lately, a vague imitation of their glamorous Night World counterparts. Her eyes didn't hold the same glint of knife-edged fear that the rest of the humans tried to disguise; they were level and clear and wonderfully _blue_. She remained calmly still amidst the motion around her, waiting patiently for him to come to halt a foot away from her. He was reminded belatedly of his own appearance, and ran a useless hand through his hair, dirt scattering where he touched. He racked his brain painfully for something to say beyond 'Hi,' but she managed to speak first.

"Ash Redfern." Her voice was huskier than he remembered, but there was the same rhythm to her speech. "You certainly took your time."

The earth under his feet stopped turning. The words he had been forming vanished instantly, but he had a hunch they were something along the lines of 'Hey, you're never going to believe this, but…' _She remembered him._ It was better than anything he had wished for. In all his imaginings of this scenario he had never dared to dream…

Her next words brought that train of thought to screeching halt as well. It was the sweet, lyrical tone she used when she was in anything but a good mood.

"Now, would mind please telling me _who the hell are you?_"

TBC. (In the case of reviews, that is.)


	2. Hey, Don't I Know You?

**chapter two**

"You know my name," he said, sounding like a cat looks with its fur standing on end. He instantly cursed himself for being idiotic, repeating the obvious. But she didn't seem to notice his own internal turmoil, her brow furrowing lightly.

"I've seen your face a lot. In dreams, in crowded places. Your name took longer to come to me. But that doesn't explain _why_. Who _are_ you?"

His mouth opened and closed several times before he finally decided on, "Look, you and I need to talk. Somewhere--" he glanced around, taking into account all the faces turned toward the scene they were making, staring shamelessly, "--else. What would you say to me buying you dinner?"

"I'd say you're definitely forward."

"Consider yourself a special case, sweetheart. So is that a yes or no?"

She looked for all the world like she was going to tell him to go jump off a cliff, but her nose finally scrunched as if she had caught a whiff of something distasteful, and she said warily, "Okay."

"Good. That's settled. C'mon." He reached for her hand, then broke off the motion abruptly. _Skin to skin contact_, he chided himself. _We wouldn't want her to have a panic attack in front all these nice people, now, would we? They're liable to stake you._ Carefully, he pulled the sleeve of his sweater over his fingers before taking hold of her wrist--it was the middle of summer, but the cold or heat meant little to a vampire, and he thought he looked rather dashing in this particular piece of clothing. The only temperature that had ever mattered to him was the warmth of a fire.

She must have unconsciously sensed the tail end of his thought because she dug her heels in determinedly and wrenched her arm away. Taking advantage of his moment of stunned inaction, she seized _his_ arm, drawing the fabric of his sleeve reverently back from his flesh. "Ash," she breathed, and something about the way she spoke to him, the way she looked at him had changed tremendously. Like he was no longer a stranger.

Vampire tissue has a remarkable capacity for healing. There was nothing on the exterior that would have suggested there had ever been ugly burns across the entire exposed surface, but she seemed to know instinctively where each one had been, her fingers disturbing the air mere millimeters above his arm as she traced the shapes they had once taken. Then she touched him, and it was something like a power line exploding.

Collision. They were jarred instantly and almost painfully together. Stunning pink fireworks in his mind heralded their reunion.

_I know you, _her stray thought was a whisper in his head.

_Mary-Lynnette_, he answered her.

She stiffened, and he felt her flinching from him, jerking her hand away. Shaken was the best way to describe her expression_, _surprised, maybe even traumatized, and certainly and understandably distressed. He had a suspicion he appeared very much the same to her.

"Marianne. My name's Marianne."

Oh. "Oh." He shook his shoulders, smoothing his composure back into place. "Yeah. Well, Marianne, are you coming?"

He braced himself for a flood of demands about what had just happen, but instead she said, "Cindy. I've got to call Cindy."

"Cindy?" He got the impression that she was casting around for any excuse to escape him, and that was unthinkable. Now that he had her in sight again, he wasn't sure if he could remember how to breathe, how to _be_ without her.

"Yeah, Cindy's my aunt, and she's been taking caring of me since I was little. She'll want to know where I am."

"There's a phone you can use back at the place I'm staying. We can pick up some carry-out on the way, and you can call Cindy from there." He didn't mention he had a perfectly functional cell phone in his pocket.

She rolled her eyes, and he could have sworn she relaxed minutely. "I can just imagine that conversation. 'Hey, Cind, I just met this handsome bloodsucker on the way home from work today, and he invited me to dinner! We're going to hang out at his place for a few hours, so do you think you can waive curfew just this once?'"

There was no suppressing his reaction; he raised his eyebrows and smiled lazily at her. "'Handsome'?"

She flushed brilliantly, coloring all the way to the tips of her ears. "Pig," she admonished him.

It was so like…_herself_. He smirked, and his hand fluttered dramatically to lie over his heart. "Point," he conceded in a poor imitation of a fencer.

Their eyes met and both their burgeoning smiles flickered out as electricity surged between them. Slamming down his defenses, Ash turned his back on her and began once again weaving through the throng of people. He called over his shoulder, "Coming?"

"Yes," she panted as she jogged to keep pace with his long strides. Aunt Cindy was completely forgotten. "Wait up."

---

There was pervading sense of unreality to the whole situation. Average, bookish, conservative, and normally cautious, seventeen-year-old high school student Marianne Pierce was not a person given to flights of fancy. But in spite of a life full of well-informed and conscientious choices, one hastily given answer had thoroughly turned the whole world on end and landed her in her current position, seated in the kitchen of a lavish townhouse in Old San Francisco that she had recently discovered belonged to the infamous patron of Circle Daybreak, _the_ Thierry Descourdres, listening to the patient if somewhat stumbling explanations of her undead soulmate from another life. Marianne could barely recognize herself.

Her mind wandered back over the events that had turned a nearly typical day into something extraordinary, and she came to the fairly absurd conclusion that her car had betrayed her. The ancient, ramshackle hunk of junk that Cindy must have bought used in pre-War days should not have been running under any circumstances, but thus far Marianne had treated her only form of transportation with the utmost respect and consideration, and it had treated her in kind. The mystery of it was why it had chosen that day of all days to stall in the parking lot of the local restaurant where she worked summers as a waitress, and the fact that its long-expected demise had led her directly to Ash seemed too great of a coincidence to disregard absolutely.

But, no, the car was not entirely to blame. There were her eyes, too. Eyes that had refused to stay focused on her feet during the long walk home, instead persistently clinging to the scenery about her, revealing to her an obviously supernatural creature brooding below her feet in a crater that had been a body of water before her birth. A guilty fascination with the state of affairs that had deposited one clearly unhappy Night Person in the former San Francisco Bay had held her rapt, and fear had kept her legs immobilized when the vampire had unexpectedly climbed the cliff between them and come stalking her way.

Her instinct about his species could have been easily attributed to her familiarity with the telltale otherworldly beauty and innate grace of the non-human races--there was a shapeshifter in her English class, two lamia in World History, a werewolf in art, and at least a dozen more she had seen in passing in the halls--but the reason she didn't want to admit to herself was that his face had been a fixture in the disturbingly realistic dreams which had been recurring since before she turned fourteen. It had been two years since she had first heard herself call him 'Ash' and less than a year since a slim nymph who played a brief, one-time part in her dreams had dubbed him with the last name 'Redfern,' but it was not until that moment as she recognized the figure rapidly approaching her--blond hair to suit his namesake, long lanky frame, strikingly handsome, that arrogant swagger, the barely concealed power in each step--that she ever considered him anything more than a figment of her imagination, created to entertain that remote, outnumbered part of herself that yearned secretly for adventure. Acknowledgement of his actual existence twisted the breath out of her throat with a combination of elation and dread, effectually preventing her from fleeing long enough for him to reach her.

And then through everything else, she discovered she was angry with him. Furious, actually. Because he had hijacked nearly every one of her nights, creeping uninvited into her private thoughts, because he had taken so long to show himself, because he hadn't stayed away quite long enough. Because he was Ash Redfern, and there wasn't supposed to be any such thing. Her hands had clenched at her sides. Rage gave her the courage to speak to him.

She could have told him no when he asked her to dinner, but it would have been self-defeating and contrary to dismiss the one man who happened to have the answers she had only now learned she so desperately needed. Besides, she got the sense that he was challenging her, questioning her courage, and she didn't want to admit that he knew more about her than she did about him. She should have told him to get lost after the strange incident in the street, when a brief flash of wisdom that wasn't exactly hers had prompted her to touch him, and she'd nearly fried her nerves. It was frightening how fast everything had gotten out of control between them, and it appeared to be an indication of worse to come. But she'd been mesmerized by the brief glimpse of something unbelievably vast and beautiful and right, by the undeniable awareness him, Ash Redfern, far beyond anything a five-minute conversation could give her. It was remarkably effortless to give in to him, blithely discarding the anger that she had clutched at for the nerve to speak when he smiled heartbreakingly at her; it wasn't like he was deliberately disturbing her sleep, anyway.

The Chinese food he had picked up for her at some dubious hole-in-the-wall place was sticking unpleasantly to her ribs while she chased the remaining contents of the stryofoam container with a plastic fork. Across the table from her, Ash was fiddling nervously with his fingers on the oaken surface as he brought to a close his nearly hour-long discourse on her past life as Mary-Lynnette Carter. She caught herself studying him clandestinely from beneath her lashes for the umpteenth time that evening, taking in the fatuous smirk that hovered perpetually around the corners of his lips, the mischievous, slanted eyes, inspecting them with interest as they shifted colors, unfathomable obsidian to midnight blue to a warm amber that reminded her distantly of melted butter. He didn't look any older than twenty-one, but if the account he was relating to her was to be trusted, he was at least twice that.

_You're just as crazy as he is if you believe anything coming out of his mouth, _her cynical side reproached her straying thoughts.

_He's crazy. You're crazy,_ another, even less helpful voice added sanguinely. _You're meant for each other._

_Shut up,_ she commanded both of them. _I'm only crazy for talking to myself._

"Mare?" The unfamiliar nickname drew her attention back to the vampire, the intimacy it implied making her distinctly uncomfortable. Just at that moment, his eyes were a vivid jade, and they were focused apprehensively on her face. " Do you, um, have any questions?"

She rummaged frantically through her recollection of his words for something real she could grasp, something she could understand. "I died?" she asked at last, an unfortunate squeak in her voice betraying her.

Shame flamed in his expression, hastily suppressed. "I'm sorry," he muttered, sounding a far cry from his usual smug self.

"And now I'm sort of an Old Soul?"

"Well, I wouldn't say 'old' exactly. It's only your second time around, so to speak. You're more like a Middle-Aged Soul, or a Teenage Soul. An Adolescent Soul. When you get to be Hannah's age, then we'll talk about old."

"Hannah?" A fleeting quiver around his mouth, the slightest of grimaces, told her that she had failed some unspoken test.

"She's an old friend of mine. I'll take you out to Las Vegas sometime to see her. She'd love to meet you."

Already he was making assumptions about their relationship, planning someday trips to introduce her into his world, and that stirred an acute upsurge of panic in her. She was barely seventeen, not ready for a soulmate of any kind, much less a vampire one with a indolent smile who was still in love with a version of herself she couldn't even recall.

"Look, Ash, there's a lot here that you're expecting me to take on faith alone, and I just don't have that faith to give. I mean, number one, I barely even know you. Two, I don't believe in reincarnation, or whatever. And three…three…" Three had suddenly gone out of her head under the intensity of his gaze, but she was certain it was something important. She felt keenly that she was in danger of losing herself in him again, surrendering to his will. "I need to go home. _Now._"

"Don't!" His outburst was sudden and startling.

"What?"

"I mean, please. Please, don't leave. There's plenty of room here; you can stay the night."

She narrowed her eyes at him. Her line of questioning was making him squirm, which made her all the more intent of continuing it. "Why?"

"Honestly, because it's been a long day." He wilted in his chair, every lanky appendage becoming artfully limp, radiating weariness. "A long week, even. I'm dead-tired, and I need a shower." He motioned, indicating the light brown smudges of dirt across his face and clothing. "I'm really not all that motivated to drive you home right now."

A twang of something invisible in the air between them made it unmistakably clear that he was lying to her. "Really," she insisted, "why do you want me to stay?"

The lines around his mouth deepened into a scowl, defensiveness flickering instantly to the surface. "Forget it. It was a stupid idea, and I'm not really all that tired, anyway. I'll go get the car." He started up out of his chair.

She did everything she could short of touching him to convince him to sit back down. "Ash, after everything I've been through today I deserve better than to be lied to. What is it that you can't tell me?"

Something feral and deadly passed swiftly through his eyes, a light glittering on and off again in the distance. She knew at once that she had goaded him past some limit by prodding at this sensitive area, and a tremor of alarm ran through her muscles.

"Fine," he snapped. "You want to know the truth? The truth is, that for some insane reason, I _missed_ you. _You._ Irritating, frustrating, irksome, argumentative, you. And if you leave me again--" He sputtered over the words, his eyes sinking to the tabletop, his voice abruptly dropping until she could barely hear him. "If you leave, I don't know how I'm going to make it through the night."

It was unsettling to see him so quickly stripped raw before her. She had an astonishing and overpowering desire to throw her arms around him and shelter him from the world. No one's well being, no one's _life_ had ever depended on her before, and it was immense burden to undertake. She thought that if Cindy had been there to see Ash, she would have understood her niece's decision. "All right, I'll stay."

His eyes swung back to her face, staring at her piercingly. They were a misty gray now, like trying to peer into a fog. He snarled, an astoundingly feline sound. "I don't need pity, least of all from you."

"It's not pity. I want to stay."

He blinked, anger evaporating. "You what?"

"I want to." She met his gaze, _willing_ him to believe her, and suddenly it was difficult finding enough air in the room to breathe. Everywhere her body touched, everything in her vision shimmered with hazy, static energy. She was falling into him even as he leaned towards her, the ground sliding fluidly away from beneath her seat. She knew with certainty that if she just reached out to touch him, she could complete the circuit, and then they'd be…_somewhere else_. Somewhere better.

The same thought must have been consuming his mind, because he reached out his hand to her, fingers curling inward as if he was going to stroke her cheek. Only a few more seconds, a few more inches, and he would make contact.

_Crazy. Crazy, crazy, crazy,_ a small, disregarded part of her mind chanted.

"_Ash._"

"Mary-Lynnette."

In the next instant, his eyes became utterly vacant, like the curtains had been drawn somewhere inside. His hand fell back to his side, out of her field of vision, and he abruptly found something in the middle distance extraordinarily interesting, effectively avoiding her eyes. She gasped for breath, and the found the air exactly where it had always been. Leaning despairingly against the back of her chair, she tried to shake the sensation of being a magnet, lured irresistibly to her polar opposite through some inescapable external attraction.

What had she done wrong? Why had he pulled away from her?

Oh, right. The answer was cold wind, successfully destroying any lingering thoughts of throwing herself into Ash's arms. Her name was Marianne, not Mary-Lynnette.

"You should call your aunt," he said, recovering first. "I'm not in the habit of kidnapping teenage girls, and I have a reputation to maintain. There's a phone on the wall over there that you can use."

The ramifications of her decision were daunting, now that she had a functional mind to consider them with. "What am I supposed to tell her?" she wondered out loud.

Ash shrugged languidly as he rose from his chair, lazy smirk falling back into place. "I dunno. Why not try the truth?" He slunk away, disappearing farther within the house, presumably for that shower he so badly needed.

The truth. The offhanded suggestion stuck with her. She could tell her aunt the truth. The truth was so implausible that Cindy would never believe her; she would most likely jump to the worst conclusion possible, like that she had eloped with some middle-aged biker with skull bones tattooed on his bicep. Cindy wouldn't know where to start looking for her, and nobody would find her until she wanted to be found.

Did she want to be found? The thought startled her so much her finger froze in the middle of dialing the telephone number. Some immense revelation lay just beyond her reach like a tidal wave looming in the distance, promising both uncompromising change and unimaginable rewards. But as she stretched for it, it shrunk back into some hidden part of her conscience.

She forced herself to finish the number, listening expectantly to the ringing of on the other end. _Phone call now; think later._

* * *

**_Nine_** reviews! I'm so thrilled! I never expected that kind of response for this little nagging idea going around my head. Which means I owe each of you a big thanks for the encouragement you gave me: **Charlotte**, **magick-wolf**, **SpiritofEowyn**, **name** (whoever you are), **Lunatic**, **laura**, **Aglaia di Willow**, **Corinna**, and **incarnated-soul**. 

Now, just a small request I have for my readers. While I'm not too bad at writing descriptions, I really struggle with dialogue, and I feel that Mary-Lynnette and Ash's relationship has a big base in their conversations, and particularly in their arguments. So, if you catch either one of them saying something completely out of character in this fic, call me on it. Criticism and praise will be accepted with equal gratitude.

Catch you next chapter,

happy accident


	3. Blood and Pancakes

**chapter three**

**_"You want to give me your stick."_**

****

**_"It's not a stick, it's the way to deal with me on a equal level. One good push would do it. First here and then in the heart. You could eliminate the problem of me from your life."_**

****

Ash's voice drifted to her from some shadowy crevice of her psyche as she floated in the murky space between dreaming and waking. She groaned into a pillow. Ash. What exactly _does_ one do with a problem like Ash? Because he plainly wasn't going away.

_Another hour_, her drowsing brain promised. _Just another hour of sleep and everything will be fine._

She was inclined to believe it. Rolling over to avoid a sunbeam falling inconveniently across the bed, she buried her nose in the mattress.

Wait. _Bed._ Her last recollection was of dozing off on the sofa, waiting on Ash to return from his shower. Suspicion entering sluggishly into her somnolent thoughts, she groped blindly for a pillow, dragging it down to her face. As she had suspected, his unique scent lingered faintly in the fabric there, a mixture of soap and something distinctly wild, a bit like how she imagined the rainforest would smell. She was in a vampire's bed.

No longer asleep, she twisted herself to a sitting position and swept back the comforter in one hasty motion. Underneath, she was still mercifully dressed in the same clothes from yesterday. That aside, she scrutinized the room thoroughly, but she found no visible signs that there had been any occupants other than her over the course of the night. The uneasiness gripping her spine slackened, and she sagged against the headboard. Ash, she theorized, must have come across her sleeping last night and through some inexplicable machinations of his mind, decided that she would be more comfortable in his bed, like a primitive caveman hauling his unwilling mate back to his lair.

Sexist brute. Wasn't there a _guest room_ in the house?

Her nerves wound too tight with irritation for sleep, she relinquished the bed reluctantly. The digital clock on the bedside table read eleven thirty-nine. _Still early, then._ She yanked a hand through her tangled hair, then ran it over her hopelessly rumpled jeans and shirt. Her only set of clothes, she realized with a fair amount of displeasure. She would have given anything at that moment for a toothbrush and a fresh change of clothing.

Her now operational mind gradually recalled the noise that had disturbed her dreams and stirred her into near-consciousness in the first place. Curious, Marianne crossed the room and opened the bedroom door cautiously. The muffled thudding and sizzling she had been set on investigating had died away, only to be replaced by a tantalizing aroma wafting through the house. Captivated by the smell, she ventured out in the general direction she believed the kitchen to be in, and stumbled unexpectedly into the formal dining room. The table was set with dishes, silverware, and napkins, and the centerpiece was a heaping platter of gently steaming pancakes, surrounded by a plate of bacon, a saucer of hot syrup, and a stick of softened butter. On the plate nearest to her a folded piece of paper was propped up at an advantageous angle so that it instantly captured her attention; she lifted the placard to examine it and found scrawled across it in large, clipped handwriting: _Reserved for Marianne._ Smiling in spite of herself, all annoyance with Ash Redfern slipping conveniently out of mind, she pulled out the elaborately carved chair and settled a napkin across her lap. About to fill her plate, a hand flitted without warning across her line of sight, and she lurched back in shock, bashing the base of her skull against the sharp edge of the chair's back.

"Easy there, little lady." The hand, and the maddening drawl, proved to belong to Ash. "I won't bite." One eyebrow tilted suggestively. "Unless you're into that kind of thing."

She rubbed tenderly at the sore spot on the back of her neck. "Been working on that line all morning?" she hissed at him between clenched teeth.

"Someone's cranky," he said, shrugging the barb off with uncharacteristic cheer, cavalier grin firmly in place as he stacked his plate with pancakes and bacon.

Reassessing the amount of food the table, she berated herself for not realizing sooner that there was more than enough for two people. Ash took the seat across from her, putting enough distance between them so that there was no threat of them touching accidentally, but also ensuring there was no other place for her eyes to rest comfortably but on him. Forking two pancakes absentmindedly onto her own plate, she stared unabashedly as he applied liberal amounts of syrup and butter to his.

Becoming aware of her eyes on him, he glanced quizzically across at her, forkful of food hesitating halfway to his mouth. Syrup trickled rhythmically down from the saturated pancake onto his plate. "See something you like?"

She studiously ignored his remark. "You eat _human_ food?" she asked incredulously. The only vampires she had ever known had made an overt display of avoiding the cafeteria at lunchtime.

"Well," he answered with a philosophical air, placing his fork back on his plate, "you eat Chee-tos, don't you?" She didn't question his knowledge of her favorite snack food, she already knew the answer, so instead she nodded her head encouragingly. "It's basically the same thing. There's no real nutrition in it, but it tastes good, doesn't it?"

She mused over her new insight into vampires, observing him clinically as he took a few bites of pancake, before the second, even greater discovery occurred to her. Food does not simply materialize miraculously out of thin air; someone has to make it.

"And you _cook_?"

"One of the unfortunate by-products of growing up in an enclave. Coming back after my first trip out into the world, I found myself helplessly addicted to the food, but all the humans I came in contact with on the island were drugged or hypnotized. So, without anyone to cook it for me, I taught myself."

It was not the most flattering of confessions. After all, his first thought had been to get some _human_ to do it for him.

_But he didn't_, the annoyingly sanguine voice had resurfaced to defend Ash. _He taught himself. That's got to count for something, right?_

Unable to fashion any kind of response, either to herself or him, she covered her silence by cutting off a piece of pancake and chewing it thoughtfully. Her skin itched as he monitored the action expectantly. "It's good," she reassured him. "Really good."

"Thanks. Secret family recipe."

Her mouth paused in the middle of devouring another bite. "There's no _blood_ in these, is there?" she demanded, horrified.

"No. Actually, I got the recipe off the box," he answered slyly, unable to smother his amused chuckle. "I sincerely doubt there's such a thing as a secret Redfern family pancake recipe."

She giggled. She pressed her hand to mouth, trying to prevent more from escaping, but it was pointless. She collapsed, laughing, against the back of her chair. His eyes, a velvety brown, twinkled at her indulgently, a true, unreserved smile curving his lips alluringly. "I'm sorry," she wheezed, grasping at her self-control. "It just sounds so--_ridiculous_--when you say it that way."

"Really, it is sort of a ridiculous thought," he said when she had salvaged her self-possession enough to hear him. " Redferns are--_were_--kind of conservative, before the Old Powers and the War. They didn't approve of eating the same food that--well, in their minds, _vermin_--ate. So, no one in my family knows I can cook. I had a friend of mine smuggle the ingredients in, and luckily for me, our house had belonged to humans at one point, so there was an operating kitchen I could use. Some of the stuff I made at first, it was so awful I buried it in the backyard and burned my hair to cover the smell." One corner of his mouth lifted sardonically. "My father thought I was strange, but at least he didn't want me _dead_. "

There was a palpable undercurrent of conflict concerning father and son, but she laid her burning questions away for a later interrogation. The mood between the two of them was too amiable and unrestrained to spoil with serious conversation.

"Pass the butter, please," she said pleasantly, coyly switching the subject.

He hefted the plate to pass it to her, but thought better of it, drawing it back out her reach. "What if I offered to barter with you for the butter?"

"For the_ butter?_"

"For the butter," he reaffirmed. "I'll give you the butter, _if_ you promise not to attack me when I tell you we have visitors coming today."

She tried, for his sake, to keep her breathing under control. She really wasn't in any condition to see people: she was tired, unwashed, harassed, and just a bit out of sorts over the recent turn of events in her life. "What kind of visitors?" She forced her tone to be patient and even.

"Just some people I think you'd really want to meet. I don't want to give too much away. Trust me." He watched her waver, and added softly, "I'll even throw a shower in the deal. There's a bathroom connected to the bedroom you were in. You want a shower, don't you?"

Maybe it was the shower that swayed her. Maybe she truly did trust him. But then again, she also was beginning to believe she was certifiably insane.

"All right, pass me the butter."

When breakfast was finished, she helped him gather the dirty dishes and deposit them in the kitchen sink, and despite his insistence that she was ruining his attempt to be a good host, she assisted him in washing them. They roughhoused and splashed water at each other until they were both so drenched they dripped on the tile floor and the whole room was charged with a hazy pink afterglow. The kitchen was a warm and cheerful place, where she could forget that within the last twenty-four hours the world outside had dealt her a very severe blow, and she wholeheartedly enjoyed the chance to be completely childish and lighthearted. She felt in a few minutes like she had known him for years, which, technically, she had. And as she stood by contemplating him while he frantically struggled to flush soap out of his eye, she decided there were worse people in the world than Ash Redfern. It wouldn't be such a terrible existence, being bonded to him for life.

Well, maybe on the days they were getting along, at least.

---

Late afternoon found Marianne sequestered by herself in the study that Ash had presented to her after breakfast, reading an obviously much-loved copy of _Sense and Sensibility_ with dog-eared pages and a broken spine. The muted echoes of voices ricocheting down the hallway drew her attention from the page to the present. _So, our guests have arrived_, she deduced, and set the book affectionately aside. Suddenly secretive, she crept across the floor and opened the door by degrees, intent on preventing it from squeaking and announcing her presence. She wanted to see these visitors before they saw her. Tiptoeing through the house, she pressed her back to the wall and peered around the corner into the foyer.

Ash was engrossed in greeting four people. _Four. _She'd assumed 'visitors' meant two, maybe even three, but three girls and one man were gathered attentively around him. The man was the only one of the group displaying the telling travel stains of a long, late airplane flight: wrinkled clothes, messy dark hair, purple circles under his groggy blue eyes. The young women looked immaculate, like goddesses descended to earth, or maybe wood nymphs. No one would have ever mistaken them for anything human, especially when they were standing side by side. They were all uncannily beautiful, but each in a separate, unique fashion, like the same line of music played three different, distinct ways. Though it was impossible to determine her actual age, the oldest looked no more than twenty-five, tall and graceful as a sapling, with placid cinnamon eyes and long brown hair. The second had the appearance of twenty-three, swept-back gold hair and sharp, hawkish amber eyes. The youngest was all of nineteen, serene face with its slanted, jewel-like green eyes emerging from behind a fall of silvery-blond hair.

"--thought it might help the process," Ash was saying.

"Ash," his older sister murmured, her voice just as mild as her soft brown eyes. "Maybe you shouldn't have called us. She's still adjusting, and you can't force her to remember what she can't." She shrugged, giving the impression of a tree shivering in the wind. "Some never do."

Kestrel flicked her hair back like a bird of prey ruffling its feathers. There was primeval gleam in her eyes that said she'd much rather be somewhere miles away. "Rowan's right. You shouldn't get your hopes up. You got the girl back, what more are you expecting?"

Rowan shot her sister a gently chastising glance. "Now, you know that's not what I said."

"Close enough."

The man shuffled his feet uneasily. "If she doesn't remember me, what am I supposed to say to her, Ash? 'Uh, hi, I was your little brother in your last life. I guess that makes us related, sort of'?"

"Mark," Jade said sympathetically. Her attempt to capture his attention succeeded, and they locked gazes.

Ash watched with interest as their hands slipped naturally into each other. Jade and Mark had never had an official break up, they had merely allowed themselves to fall out of touch after Mary-Lynnette's death. Ash had always attributed it to their disparate methods of grieving; it was in Jade's nature to accept death as part of the irresistible cycle of life, but Mark had been quietly and privately devastated. Within half a year, he had requested a transfer to Duke University, and he had never once gone back to Oregon. Now, twenty-two years later, regardless of a wife and three kids at home in South Carolina, they held hands like the teenagers they had been. Their love really was an innocent one.

Ash drew a familiar scent out of the air that he should have noticed minutes ago, had his attention not been focused elsewhere. "Mare?" he raised his voice.

She materialized calmly around the corner, polite smile in place, but something in her expression reminded him of a kid with her hand caught in the proverbial cookie jar. His eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"I thought I heard someone out here," she said in way of explanation to him, before turning her smile of the four new arrivals. "Are these them, Ash?"

All half-formed thoughts about her eavesdropping promptly deserted him as he was reminded introductions were needed. "Yeah. Um, _Marianne_," he said with slight emphasis to remind the others, "these are my sisters, Rowan, Kestrel, and Jade. And that," he swung a finger in the glossy-headed man's direction, "is--"

"Mark," Marianne interrupted him hastily, taking a few steps to stand in front him. "You're Mark." She felt the disbelieving look Ash fixed on her back; he knew she didn't remember her brother. But whenever she looked at the solemn-faced older man, she saw a scrawny child underneath, sickly pale, quiet, and clingy. She wanted to protect him, to mend all his hurts, to be something she no longer knew how to be. And the burst of joy and relief that crossed his face when he believed she recognized him was worth the lie. She put her arms shyly around his shoulders, and his came up to hold her lightly back, as if she were liable to dissipate like steam through his hands. "It's good to finally meet you," she whispered fiercely in his ear. She felt strangely like she was going to cry for the first time in years.

After a few more minutes of embarrassed introduction, Ash expertly rounded up everyone and ushered them into more comfortable positions in the living room. The conversation flowed effortlessly between all of them, thanks in part to the efforts of Ash and Rowan, maneuvering smoothly through school and childhood memories, their current lives, travel, politics, weather, and cars, but more often than not Marianne found the others talking over her head about some event she knew nothing about while she smiled and nodded blankly. The longer she was with them, the more evident it became that despite genuine respect and concern for each other, they were six very dissimilar personalities, trying vainly to recreate some connection that was no longer there.

She glanced sideways at Mark often, gauging his reaction, watching him smile, or just studying his profile. She knew she loved him in a detached way from the dull ache around her heart when she looked into his eyes. She caught glimpses behind her eyelids of how they must have been: herself standing at the foot of a tree, head tilted anxiously back as he struggled to climb the branches above her, prepared to catch him if he fell; holding his hand in the waiting room at the doctor's office; reading bedtime stories by flashlight; the two of them sharing the weight of a telescope as they plodded up a manzanita-coated hill to watch the stars. But there was no emotion, no substance attached to the images; they were as flat and washed-out as old photographs. She wished desperately to be his big sister again, but she didn't know who that was anymore.

At one point, the vampires vanished into the kitchen to feed off the packages of blood Ash kept stocked in the refrigerator, Kestrel trailing despondently behind as she grumbled over how she'd rather hunt her own meal, and the two humans were left alone together. Marianne stuck to safe topics, quizzing Mark about his family. He had a wife of thirteen years named Kari, two young girls, and an infant son. They held a lively discussion over whether or not it was correct for her to term the children her nieces and nephew, and when she noticed them laughing easily together, she decided she wouldn't allow herself to be unhappy over the situation. Their new relationship was fitting. She was seventeen and he was forty-one, they both had new lives, new memories, new families; they weren't sister and brother anymore, but they could still be friends.

Then came the part of the evening she was dreading most, the goodbyes.

Rowan's eyes were over-bright with unshed tears as she hugged her one-time blood sister. She and Mary-Lynnette had been true sisters in all the ways that had mattered, and the vampire still felt a resonance of that old connection with Marianne. It was hard to accept that they were little more than acquaintances now. Marianne struggled to find the words to express her confused emotions and tears made her own eyes damp.

"It's okay," Rowan assured her thickly when Marianne stumbled clumsily over her farewell. "I understand. I missed you, too."

Kestrel was even harder to speak to, but for entirely different reasons. Marianne admired her uncivilized ferocity, but the two had the least in common and it was hard to bridge that gap. So, finally, she settled on the only phrase that sounded appropriate, "Good hunting."

Kestrel grinned savagely. "If he ever makes you really angry, you can always put garlic in his bed," she offered helpfully. "He _hates_ the smell of garlic."

She and Mark embraced again, more honestly this time.

"Come out to see me in South Carolina sometime," he suggested earnestly.

"I'd love to meet the kids," she agreed in her own way.

Jade was last, cheeks dimpling as she smiled. "I'm glad you're back," she whispered in Marianne's ear as she released her from a quick squeeze. "He's no fun when you're not around."

Ash shut the front door behind them, sliding the bolt into place, then he yawned and stretched elegantly. "So, was the butter worth all that?" he asked mischievously.

"Oh, definitely."

* * *

**Aglaia di Willow:** How did you manage to read my mind on exactly where I want to go with the characters? And don't worry about not having any criticism. Outright flattery works just as well with me. :) 

**amber-rules:** Don't worry, I'm working on the together part.

**incarnated-soul:** Thank you, thank you, thank you. All very kind things to say about me. You had me blushing!

**magick-wolf:** Let me set it straight for you. Mary-Lynnette _is_ Mary-Lynnette, and only an Old Soul in the sense that she has been reincarnated just this _one_ time as Marianne because she promised Ash she'd be back. Old Souls confuse me, too. Oh, and get some bed rest, sweetie. Love to you too.

**laura:** Thank you, but I have to give credit for all big long words n stuff to my handy desk-side thesaurus.

**fate22:** If you do decide to do a story about Mary-Lynnette reincarnated, I don't think I can compete! And don't worry about Ash, he gets more and more like his old self when Marianne's around. I know he seems kinda dark, but that's my writing style for you--everything turns out so _depressing_!

**Charlotte**: Thank you for your reassurance and review! I really appreciate it.

**Lunatic:** I'm not quite sure where I got the idea for her name to be Marianne, but I guess that's how all the best ideas work, right? As to Ash, well, I guess he just has some problems left to work out. Darn suspense.


	4. Road Trip!

A/N: I'm so, so sorry about the long wait for this chapter, but with school starting back and my big brother moving into the college dorms, it's been an understandably trying and emotional week. Unfortunately, I think some of my own mood spilled over to make this chapter a very somber one, and all the fluff I threw in doesn't seem to be enough to balance that. And in addition to everything else, this was a very difficult chapter for me to write. I've always been awful at transitions. =) Anyway, I hope that it's not as awkward to read as it was to write.

**chapter four**

Marianne had cried herself to sleep and her dreams had been long and dark and twisted, woven up with untamed fires and the reek of burning oil. It had been a stupid, immature thing to do, and the headache currently hammering in her temples combined with her dreadfully stuffy nose were decidedly _un_kind reminders of why she hadn't cried like that since she was five and her parents died.

She had promised herself she wouldn't be upset, but within an hour of Rowan, Kestrel, Jade, and Mark's departure, she had been absolutely miserable. And the worst part was that she couldn't even decipher _what_ exactly had sunken her mood so low. She scarcely understood herself anymore; she wasn't the same Marianne now that her life was knotted up with Ash's. By some unseen motion, he had taken every hidden aspect of her and brought it to the surface, destroying the conscientious outer shell that had been hers for seventeen years in the process. Now she was violent, vulnerable, emotional, brash, and in lo…

She swatted irritably at the thought, tossing in bed.

Bed. She sighed, recognizing the slightly scratchy sensation of cotton sheets beneath her cheek. She had made a point of falling asleep on the couch this time, after learning there was in fact no guest room. She had even gone to the trouble of seeking out the linen closet so she could make up a nest of blankets and pillows for herself. And he had ignored that, scooped her up and tucked her into bed, no doubt sleeping on the cramped sofa himself.

It said a lot about the parts of his character he tried to keep secret, she supposed, that he chose to give up his bed so that she could be comfy. He was chivalrous. Generous. Romantic. Traditional. With enough propriety and good sense to know she wouldn't have welcomed a bedmate, even in the platonic sense.

But that did not make him any less infuriating. She was _not_ some heroine from a novel to bundle up whenever he pleased and deposit wherever he felt fit, without a volition of her own. Their relationship--whatever that meant--was simply not going to work if he didn't respect her decisions.

She gave a more forceful toss, victoriously wrenching herself free of the blankets, and felt her breath leave her in one more leaden heave of her chest. She had successfully ruined another morning of rest by grappling with the tangle of thoughts cluttered around her problematic soulmate. She opened one eye, then the other; there was no sunlight spilling vexingly through the windows this morning because Ash had been thoughtful enough to draw the vampire-friendly blackout curtains. But it also had the unfortunate effect of plunging the room into a darkness similar to that found in an underground cave, and without vampire eyesight, she was hard-pressed to see her hand in front of her face. The only illumination in the room came from the clock, harsh red lights declaring it to be a half-past ten, and she used what little glow it gave off to stumble and curse her way to the door.

Breakfast had obviously been a onetime welcome-back affair because both the kitchen and the dining room were deserted. She glanced from the kitchen into the adjacent living room and affirmed that Ash was indeed asleep on the couch, over-long legs dangling over the end, and from the unnatural angle his head was tilted at, he was going to have an awful crick in his neck when he woke up. A bewildering tenderness swelled in her chest, pressing treacherously against her lungs as her eyes wandered his sleeping frame, independent of the reprimands of her rational mind. Lines that she had never realized existed had eased, and at that moment he didn't have the consciousness to look shallow or careless or enigmatic. He looked innocent. At peace. Vulnerable.

Exactly how he would never what her to think of him, she knew undoubtedly, a faint blush beginning to smolder impractically in her face. She sensed guiltily that it was a breech of some unspoken understanding to spy on him while he was incapable of defending himself, and hurriedly retreated into the kitchen to focus her attention on the pursuit of breakfast. Almost instantly she realized the disadvantages of being a human in a house owned and inhabited by vampires. All the groceries Ash had stockpiled for his stay in San Francisco had been easily exhausted between her breakfast and dinner, and now the cabinets and refrigerator were discouragingly bare. At length, in the cobwebbed corner of the highest shelf of the pantry, she uncovered a single box, and shaking it to dislodge the light coating of dust, she discerned that it was some off-brand sugary cereal not _too_ far past its expiration date. Milk was too much to hope for, though, the only liquid chilling in the refrigerator being alarmingly and nauseatingly _red_. She contemplated running water over her cereal, then decided that the blood would have been more appetizing, and grabbed a spoon and bowl before eating it dry.

The contrast between a waking and a sleeping Ash was immediately apparent when he lurched groggily into the room after a few minutes, most likely woken by the noise she was making. Dressed in hastily thrown on ripped jeans and a clinging faded black shirt discolored nearly to gray by countless washes, with his hair impeccably tousled from lying on it, he looked…_devastating_. Her heart was tripping unsteadily beneath her ribs, and it was a herculean task simply to manage an intelligible good morning. He mumbled something derogatory about the actual quality of the morning and collapsed into the chair next to her, all considerations about retaining space between them banished from his mind.

So yesterday had been a rare case; he wasn't really a morning person. That made her feel infinitely better. When he was grumpy and lethargic, she didn't feel obligated to hold a conversation with him, and when he wasn't charming her senseless with breakfast conversation, it was easier to remember to dislike him. But that didn't prevent her from casting frequent sideways stares at him, observing him gradually blinking into awareness. Around the sixth time, he caught her eye and held it, the last signs of sleepiness vanished.

"I want you to come to Vegas with me."

"What?" The demand was so unexpected that it took a long moment to register, but when its meaning dawned on her, her answer was immediate, "Ash, no."

"It would only be for a couple of days," he persisted. "I was supposed to be back two days ago, and I can't stay here any longer. I thought you might like to come with me."

More adamantly, "No."

Hurt glimmered in the back of his eyes, quickly concealed as his eyelids dropped to cover the dazzlingly violet irises, then opened again deliberately. "Oh."

"It's not that it's a _completely_ awful idea," she stumbled over herself to explain, to erase the responsibility she felt for that fleeting grimace. He had to know that it wasn't _him_ that she was rejecting--at least she was fairly certain it wasn't. "There's just too much here--my aunt, my job…"

Something flickered underneath the surface, a flash of victory as a sleek predator latched onto a weakness in its quarry. "Did you even call your aunt yesterday?" His voice was terribly silky and calculating.

"Well…no."

"What about work? Did you call in sick?"

"I--no. I forgot."

"Were you planning on going home today, then?"

"Maybe. I don't know. I hadn't thought about it yet." She was feeling increasingly cornered by his direct confrontation, and she longed to be able to lash out at him.

"I don't understand. If you weren't going to leave, what's the difference from spending the day here with me or in Las Vegas with me?"

"Oh, I'm not sure. Four, five hundred miles, perhaps?" Sarcasm lent her voice a dangerous edge as she found an angle to attack him from.

"_Beyond_ the obvious, Marianne," he insisted, urgency compelling him to lean towards her, producing in her an even more heightened feeling of entrapment. "What's the real issue here? What are you afraid of?"

"The real issue? The real issue is that I've known you for a grand total of three days--no, two and a half if I'm being generous. I can't take a road trip with you. I shouldn't have even let you buy me dinner, much less bring me back to your house."

"I know what your common sense is telling you, but that's not what I'm concerned with. What I want to know is, why are you still here in spite of it?"

"_Because_ it's only been three days. Not a lot of time, all things considered, to deal with some exceptionally radical new concepts. Weird dreams. Being an Old Soul. The fact that I'm in--" she faltered, checking herself again on the verge of admitting the impossible, "--soulmates with a vampire. I'm trying to understand, Ash. God knows, all I want is to understand."

"I can help with that. The understanding part." They had both swiveled in their chairs to face each other in the midst of their debate, and now she had no alternative but to look at him or at the floor. She chose the latter. The purpose behind his words was agonizingly apparent to her, and that knowledge was accompanied by a swell of fear. And longing. And more fear.

"Tell me what you want, Mare. That's all you have to do," he pressed her gently.

Her pulse was thunderously loud in her ears, and she could hardly hear herself whisper over the roaring. "_I want to go home._"

His fist came down, patience exhausted, and the whole table rattled with the impact. "Don't you get it yet? You _are_ home. You and me. Can't I make you understand that?" But the last part wasn't so much a request as a warning. His hand was already gravitating toward her, intent on the curve of her face.

And she recognized what was happening immediately in a bizarre, slow motion sort of unreality. He couldn't be allowed to touch her, or else it would be a repeat performance of what had transpired that first day on the street, only with possibly more monstrous consequences. She would lose herself in him, lose the awareness of her own will, her own resolution. It was ridiculous to be arguing with herself, after all. Even a smug, self-important, _blond_ half of herself.

Terror battled the anticipation quivering her backbone. An excruciatingly sweet tension was multiplying in her muscles, drawing them tight in expectation, and she felt with steadfast sureness that she had to find an outlet for it, like drawing off lightning with a lightning rod. The violence of the emotions clashing in her sparked with the violence in her soul.

She'd never hit anyone, not since second grade when Jacob Duffe had pushed her off the slide, and even then she'd been the one punished for it. But it didn't require much experience to land one open-handed blow across Ash's unsuspecting face.

And it was enough. Apparently, the soulmate connection had become combustible after three days of denial, and the escalating prospect of Ash's hand had amplified the pressure to a point where it found release in the briefest of contact. There was no sensation of falling this time, only a dizzying vertigo as she found herself in a bewildering place of dazzling colors, shifting like a prism caught in the sun, intertwined inseparably with soaring shadows. She'd believed she'd seen him exposed that evening in the kitchen, but that was a pale reflection of the raw, overpowering sense of Ash Redfern that pervaded this place.

His mind, she realized with an unsteady giddiness. She was in his mind, a crucial detail that was accompanied by a whole multitude of extra emotions--awe, terror, reverence, disbelief, and a strange overriding curiosity. The last got the better of her, and she reached out for him, not with any physical part of herself, but with something she assumed must be the _soul_ portion of soulmate. She probed those murky places cautiously, disturbing the surface like fingers skimming over lake water, and the memories that had shaped them drifted effortlessly free, showing her shattered images of darkness, blood, fear, pain…and guilt. Everything was wrapped up in overwhelming guilt.

It was overpowering, forcing her into retreat to recompose herself, and when she did she became of aware of Ash for the first time, hovering in the edges of her perception. He had obviously been there the entire time, bombarded with her unguarded feelings, reliving those visions with her, and now he was waiting. His resignation flowed over her in intense waves, and she knew he was waiting for her final judgment on him, braced for rejection and silently ravaged by his own shame. A memory of her own shivered loose in recognition, a line of a poem she had read once--_"Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back, guilty of dust and sin."_°

_"But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack from my first entrance in, drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning if I lacked anything,"_ something alarmingly similar to Ash's corporeal voice completed the stanza dutifully. _Yeah, you read me that one time._ _I guess it's…apt._

Hearing Ash with her mind was an experience worlds apart from hearing him with her ears. There was a bitterness that came with it that was far beyond anything he could have conveyed to her any other way, a piece of himself attached to every word. Telepathy, she put a name to it.

_Something like telepathy, yes, but…not quite._ Bemusement. Hesitation. A loss for words.

_Way to be ambiguous_, she answered automatically, never wondering if he heard her like she did him. When his reaction came back to her, she recognized the lightening of his mood, and was relieved that the time for her to pass judgment had elapsed. There had been nothing she could have said that he hadn't most likely told himself a hundredfold, anyway. But the recollection of what she had witnessed in his mind stuck with her, rasping against some vaguely familiar nerve.

She turned her metaphorical back on the shadowy stains, going exploring in the vibrant kaleidoscope of his memories. She found herself everywhere--at least that part of her that was distantly Mary-Lynnette--lit by sun and starlight, laughing, arguing, irritated, grumpy, content. Even when she wasn't actually with him, she remained in each thought, a moral presence, a guiding star. His memories had all the depth and passion her own few lacked, everything saturated with his moods and his thoughts, anger, confusion, mischief, playfulness, remorse, gratitude, and love--real, all-consuming, poetic love. She was living her life through his eyes, and the experience was earth shattering. Her last inane hope that there had been some mistake, that she hadn't actually been Mary-Lynnette, disappeared. She took stock of everything he had told her, and she believed it wholeheartedly. In his exasperating way, he was absolutely right; she understood now.

And he had to know that, that her views on him, on herself, had shifted drastically. There had to be some way to convey that wordless revolution. And there was.

_All right, we'll go to Las Vegas._

_Really? _Satisfaction. A blaze of triumph.

"Yes. Just don't get too used to getting your way," she cautioned half-seriously, surprised to find that her mouth still worked. She blinked, returning without warning to her own body. They were both kneeling on the floor, her toppled chair a few feet away hinting at how they had gotten there. His arms were around her, pulling her close to his chest, the last defense keeping her upright in her unbalanced position. She was at just the perfect height that her eyes were level with his lips, and it was inconceivable that she should wrench her gaze away. She was feeling rash and intoxicated, enchanted by their arches and hollows, and it would be amazingly easy to kiss him. She'd only have to tilt her head back a tiny bit, and maybe a little to the side, and their lips would touch, and…then what? Inexperience put the last beyond her imagination. But she had the feeling that the rest would take care of itself. Ash would take care of it.

At the exact moment she made up her mind, Ash thoroughly ruined all of her plans by frowning and snatching his arms away, depriving her of support, and sending her toppling to the floor. Sending a reproachful glare down at her, he kneaded carefully at the fading red imprint of her hand on his cheek.

"Ow. That _hurt_."

The piercing ache spreading from the top of her skull down her back was a magnificent reminder of every reason she found him infuriating and insufferable. _Conceited, self-absorbed, dense, chauvinistic…_a sympathetic voice chanted through the list of his faults as she drew back her knee in preparation. The kick landed her heel solidly in the middle of his kneecap, and despite vampire reflexes, the astonishment of the blow threw him off balance. He tottered uncertainly for a few perilous seconds before tumbling to sprawl full-length on floor beside her. She watched his face darken with approaching storm clouds, a sure sign that he was losing a battle with his temper. And then abruptly his expression cleared.

The first chuckle was uncertain, almost forced out of his chest, but the next was easier, unrestrained, and it sprung up naturally from there as he curled around himself in a seizure of laughter. Once she overcame her initial astonishment at his unforeseen behavior, it seemed only right to follow his example, laughing uncontrollably at the ridiculous scene the two of them made, collapsed on the kitchen floor.

Though she wasn't quite certain she understood what was so funny.

°°°

Cruising along the nearly deserted highway at speeds far exceeding anything Marianne found comfortable, they allowed the wind whistling through the open windows of the Porsche to do the talking for them. They'd barely spoken to each other over the past few hours, excepting a small crisis over the fact that Marianne had no clothes to pack for the trip. Ash had wanted to assure her that there were plenty of her clothes left at Theirry's from her last visit there, but he had the feeling that it would have only been more distressing for her, and he'd had to settle for guaranteeing her that he would take care of all the details. Her unwilling dependence on him had nettled her and successfully terminated the conversation. So, in the interim, they'd had plenty of time to recover those walls that had been torn away from them that morning, and plenty of opportunity to take in the scenery on their trip. Not that there was much to see. A major portion of southern California was now ghost towns, burned out shells riddled with inexplicable craters and wind-scoured debris.

He'd been catching glimpses of Marianne fidgeting out of the corner of his eye for the past half hour, and he expected it was only a matter of time before she hazarded some manner of communication.

At last, turning decisively from the window, she asked, "Who _did_ all of this?"

Concealing an inward wince, Ash wished fervently that she had chosen some other subject, but any discussion between them was too valuable to refuse her an answer. "A cousin of mine. Delos." Stirring restlessly in his seat, his hands clenched unconsciously around the wheel as he debated silently over adding an addendum, something that would undoubtedly require delving into some none too pleasant memories. Better that she knew beforehand, he decided at last. "Which reminds me, I should probably warn you just in case we run into him around, Delos…um, ah--Well, you see, the source of the Wild Powers' strength was their blood. When it was a running, they had access to the blue fire, which had the ability to do some pretty amazing things: explode boulders, stop trains, put out fires, disintegrate houses, stuff like that. Let's just say Delos got into a pretty bad situation and leave it that, okay? Usually he only needed a trickle, but he got desperate, and he…took off the whole arm, all the way to the elbow. So, I guess what I'm saying is, try not to stare. He doesn't like to be reminded of what happened, what he unleashed here."

"Oh, gosh--" There weren't any words to express her horror and empathy. "Ash, that's _awful_."

His breath escaped in a humorless laugh. "Yeah. I guess we all lost something, even when we were on the winning side."

She twisted in her seatbelt to face him entirely. It was impossible to see his eyes behind his dark sunglasses and both his hands were locked on the steering wheel. Sometimes, just when she was sure she knew everything she possibly could about him, he said something so astounding that she almost believed there might be some intelligence behind those good looks. She licked her lips nervously, wrestling with a comment on the tip of her tongue. She already knew the answer, but she wanted to hear from him because…because she needed reassurance. Because he rarely spoke about himself. She knew about what happened to her, about Delos, and a dozen more she had never met, but she was desperate to know what had happened to _him_.

"Wh-What did you lose?"

_You. _The reply was instantaneous, exactly the declaration that she would want to hear, but he couldn't bring himself to vocalize it because all at once it wasn't that simple. He had never allowed himself to dwell on these particular memories, and now that he was compelled to, he was realizing just how extensive the damage was. He'd lost her, and his some of his composure, his self-confidence, his sanity, and sleep. He'd lost a whole lot of sleep.

But that's what happens when you kill the woman you love. Oh, he knew he hadn't literally killed her, but sometimes he wondered if he hadn't of taken so much, if hadn't taken any at all, could she had survived three more days? No, almost certainly not, but that didn't take away the possibilities, the _what ifs_, that dogged him in his sleeping hours.

The expectant silence swallowed up his private thoughts, reminding him that a response was anticipated. He forced his shoulders to loosen in a nonchalant shrug, his voice to be cool and even. "Not as much as some."

When she remained quiet, eyes turning inward on her own thoughts, he berated himself for saying the wrong thing, for driving her away. As the next few miles passed, he was certain he had already destroyed all the hopes he had for this excursion. But eventually, she questioned him unperturbedly about their destination, nothing about her betraying any wrongdoing on his part, and he enthusiastically answered all her inquiries about Las Vegas, managing to keep the dialogue between them open for the remainder of the drive.

Las Vegas was one of the few cities in the world that had grown since the War. As the unofficial capitol of all Circle Daybreak, it attracted all sorts of people, from sightseers to politicians, transforming it into a supernatural equivalent of Washington, D.C. And the businesses in Vegas, the strip and all of its attractions, had only grown and flourished with the patronage its new position afforded it.

It wasn't until they were well within the city limits that the energy hit him, stealing away the air in his lungs and cutting him short in mid-sentence. Marianne opened her mouth to demand what was wrong, but the pressure crashed into her too, trailing slimy fingers down her vertebrae and forcing her stomach into her throat. It suspended them in immobility until the very moment she was sure she was going to spontaneously combust, before finally it recognized Ash's psychic imprint, and eased away to let them pass with an audible popping.

Ash wheezed, readjusting his slick hands on the wheel. "Witches," he muttered, with the addition of several colorful adjectives. "Thierry hires the six most powerful witches in the world to put up wards, and you'd think they'd have the decency to at least make the experience _tolerable_."

But underneath his resentment was the knowledge that the wards were necessary. Being one of the most influential people in the world, and certainly the most influential vampire, the public leader of Circle Daybreak was under constant threat, and by extension, Hannah was as well. There were countless disgruntled Night People and fanatical humans who would love to be able to brag that they were the one to kill the first made vampire…or the one thing he loved most in the world. __

Braking mere inches from the spiked, iron-cast gate that marked Thierry's property, Ash thrummed his fingers impatiently on the shift stick, watching the figure that emerged from the guardhouse glide leisurely through the night toward the car. A flashlight flipped on, directed in his eyes. Ash hissed, cowering backwards, and Marianne observed his eyes, now devoid of sunglasses, as the pupils narrowed to infinitesimal slits.

"Mister Ash," the sandy-haired witch greeted him heartily. "You're late getting back."

Ash shaded his eyes with one hand, peering blindly in the direction of voice. "Abforth? Is that you?"

"Yessir."

"Wonderful," he said flatly. "Now would you turn off that Goddess-accursed light? I can't see a damn thing."

The witch only grinned broadly as he disobeyed, moving the flashlight's beam across the seat to examine the second shape in the car. His eyes widened. Notwithstanding Ash's reputation, he wasn't in the habit of bringing mysterious women back to the mansion, and Abforth had been in Thierry's service long enough to recognize the particular pair of blue eyes occupying the passenger side.

"Welcome, miss," he barely managed in a breathy voice. He spun around to make a frantic motion at his partner in the guardhouse. Inside, the werewolf urgently jabbed at the buzzer to the house, alerting the Lord and Lady. Returning his attention to the two in the car, he smoothed his smile back into place. "We're honored to have you here."

He flickered the switch on the flashlight, shutting it off, and took a step backwards away from the car. As the gates swung inward, he made a brief, imperious gesture ushering them inside. "You're free to go," he announced in his most authoritative manner.

Ash rolled his eyes, but managed an almost sincere-sounding thank you, before pressing on the accelerator a bit too hard. He parked at the head of the drive and proceeded to extract his lanky body from the low, compact car, stretching out aches and pains. Marianne followed his example, then ground to a halt as she caught her first true glimpse of the Descouerdres mansion.

It was a truly impressive sight. Necessity and the years had transformed the original house into something much closer to a medieval fortress, complete with ramparts, battle scars, and windows narrowed expertly to slits to allow a spell caster to see out without his target being able to focus on him. Black roses were skillfully woven into landscaping and were the secret heart of every design, laced cunningly into the architecture. Ash knew that on the interior the influence of Thierry and Hannah made it much more personable and home-like, but from the outside, the dark, towering structure was an intimidating aura.

"'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,°°'" Marianne murmured, overawed.

Ash chuckled. "Theirry's not nearly _that_ bad." He wrapped an arm around her waist, shepherding her forward and producing a sensation totally at odds with the foreboding she was feeling. "He's only eighteen, after all."

* * *

°The lines are from George Herbert's poem _Love (III)_.

°°Marianne's quote is the words Dante sees engraved on the Gate of Hell in _The Inferno_.

* * *

First of all, kudos to everyone who found the last chapter and reviewed despite the problems was having at the time! Thank you so much for your reviews and your patience!

**tanya:** I was so glad to get your review! I have to admit the part with Mark and the girls made me sad too when I wrote it, but I didn't see any other way it could be. But I promise the story will take an upswing in mood very soon.

**Aglaia di Willow:** LoL! I wouldn't mind waking up in his bed, either, but there's no accounting for Marianne's taste. Hopefully, you get a little more insight into why this particular habit bothers her in this chapter. And I'm so relieved to know that you caught the humor in the last chapter. I always worry when I write no else will find it as funny as I do.

**Charlotte:** Again, a big thank you for being persistent about reviewing! That fact that you came back to do it makes my gratitude that much more. And I'm relieved that you approve of my decision about Mark and Jade. I wasn't sure if it would make sense to anyone other than me.

**WildFire070:** I didn't realize I had a bandwagon! But the fact that your review is out of the norm for you, makes it that much more significant to me. Thank you, thank you, thank you, and hopefully, if I do my job right, you won't have any criticism in the future, either. (But don't be hesistant about giving it if I fail!)

**laura:** It's good to know that you enjoyed the chapter despite the fact that it was sad. As to Ash, I'm definitely going to work through his issues, and soon enough he won't need to keep his distance. So sorry about keeping you waiting with the update.

**incarnated-soul:** I'm going to answer your question about Marianne's memory with one of my own: does she _need_ to remember everything? Now that I'm done being ambiguous, I'll try to explain the title briefly. At the end of DoD, ML describes Ash as a knight errant, going out into the world. In this case, ML is the 'errant' one (hence the 'Lady') coming back to Ash as Marianne from her adventures in the herafter. And I hope the quality of the story doesn't suffer from the lack of dialogue. I try really hard to make up in other ways what I lack in that skill.

**follow-ur-dreams:** Glad you like the fluff! I love writing that above all else. And I really do like your suggestion. I was _so_ close to incorporating a quote/dream from DoD in every chapter, but I feel that Marianne has to understand herself and Ash before she can remember ML and Ash. But she'll start remembering soon, I promise.


	5. Homecoming

**chapter five**

Ash was right--he _was_ eighteen.

Marianne wasn't sure what she was expecting of the leader of Circle Daybreak, but it certainly wasn't that. Perhaps she'd been holding out for someone more sinister-looking to go along with the house: flowing black cape, chalky white skin, a maniacal laugh, possibly even some shape shifting. But then again, maybe she'd read _Dracula_ one too many times.

Instead, the figure waiting to welcome them in the entrance hallway was youthful, the blond hair falling unnoticed over one eye subtracting another year or two from his appearance, tall, statuesque, divinely handsome--but she supposed the last was a given, considering his undead status. She concluded her scrutiny of him by meeting his eyes, dark eyes that absolutely abolished any enduring notions of him being a teenager. _Old_ eyes. But not only old. Commanding. Dependable. Like a seasoned general assessing a battlefield. He radiated a sense of control and aplomb that put her instantly at ease.

She liked him.

The woman at his side was, in the typical mode of soulmates, not his match, but his compliment. The light shining from the chandelier brought out warm golden tones in her fair hair and faded the color from her face, marking a stark contrast with the pink birthmark smudged across one cheek. What had once been girlish loveliness had ripened and refined into beauty with her forty-odd years of life, those usual signs of age only enhancing her appeal; tiny crows' feet at the creases of her eyelids and lines defining the broad boundaries of her smile hinted at a amiable personality and a healthy sense of humor, a person grown accustomed to happiness in this lifetime. And the ancient wisdom seated at the core of her gray eyes was much better suited to her body than it was to the boyish vampire.

"Marianne. Thierry," Ash said with a wave of his hand, his own skewed version of a suitable introduction.

Thierry actually swept a slight bow--but all the more impressive, he managed to look graceful in the process, no absurd grin ruined the action, no unnecessary bob of his head broke the fluency of the motion. It was utterly _natural_.

Which was, she reminded herself through her amazement, something to be expected of an immortal creature that had in all likelihood served in antique courts. Countless empires had risen and fallen, history had cycled on, and somehow this one vampire had survived the fallout, a silent witness to events that were now only found in textbooks. She was thunderstruck by the boundless possibilities of what he had watched unfold, what he had participated in. He had alive when the pyramids were being raised in Egypt. The seen the rule of Caesars, the Mongol hordes, the Renaissance, the French Revolution, the Civil War. Napoleon, Queen Elizabeth, Hitler and Stalin, Lincoln and Gandhi. He'd been a contemporary of everyone from Virgil and Homer to Edith Wharton and Sigmund Freud. Had he known Chaucer? What about Shakespeare? Byron, Percy, the Shelleys? Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Gertrude Stein? Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway? Jane Austen, even?

A slight, amused smile crept across Thierry's lips as he waited expectantly on her response, and when Marianne become conscious that she'd delayed a few seconds too long mulling over her own thoughts, she scrambled frenetically for words, wondering fearfully if she was required to curtsey in return. What was the proper greeting to give the man whose memory you were desperate to pick through?

"Um, nice to meet you?"

Her nerves twisted the statement into a question, but Thierry didn't seem to notice, or if he did, he was far too courteous to be mortified on her part. His smile reached his eyes now, but he wasn't looking at her anymore, his gaze settling over her shoulder on her companion.

"You've proven again that you're one lucky vampire, Ash, I hope you realize that. She's quite a catch."

"Yeah," Ash rubbed vaguely at the back of his neck. "You can say that again." But he didn't look like he shared Thierry's mirth--more like he was recounting his bruises.

Perhaps Thierry might have had some response to that, but the fourth presence in the room was becoming impatient with the interruption, and made herself subtly known.

"Of course," Ash pronounced airily. "How could I forget? Marianne, may I present _Lady_"--here a wicked wink, suggesting some long-standing dispute between the two of them--"Hannah."

"Just Hannah," the older woman was quick to correct him. "My _friends_"--glare--"call me Hannah. What use is a title to me if any rogue off the street can use it?" She released Ash from her glower, returning her attention to the person she was more interested to hear from. "Oh, but you--"

Marianne was caught up abruptly in a brief, fierce hug. Instantly her muscles tensed at the unexpected contact, but after a moment she reminded herself of the five other strangers she had allowed into her life in the past few days, and she relaxed, squeezing Hannah's shoulders in response.

Hannah pulled back, shoving a fleeing strand of hair behind her ear as she laughed timidly. "I'm sorry," she said in way of explanation. "It's just been so long. And you--you look..." She hesitated, glancing past Marianne to Ash, but recovered immediately, turning her smile up another watt. "Great. Just like yourself."

Marianne managed some sort of abashed, noncommittal answer, uncertain of exactly what the praise meant. She'd never thought to ask--did she still look like Mary-Lynnette? If that was true, it must seem to them all like some seventeen-year-old ghost had wandered back onto their lives. Her appearance must be...unsettling...for everyone.

"But I'm skipping the obvious questions," Hannah was continuing eagerly. "How was the drive here? Goddess, I hope Ash didn't sing along with radio." She affected a dismayed expression. "He didn't, did he?"

"I'll have you know, there is absolutely nothing wrong with my--"

"Long," Marianne admitted, cutting Ash's objection short. "It was a long drive." She wrinkled her nose. "And stuffy. He refused to let me roll down the windows after we got off the highway."

"In case you haven't noticed, we're in a desert, Mare," he admonished. "Do you realize what all that sand and grit _does_ to a leather interior?"

"Ash," Thierry said gravely, eyes twinkling. "I think Marianne's health is a priority that certainly ranks above the appearance of your car."

Marianne discovered herself grinning unconditionally at Hannah and Thierry, and them back at her. Teasing her soulmate was, she found, much more enjoyable when he was outnumbered. She had a premonition that she was going to get along splendidly in Thierry's home, probably even more so than Ash had expected.

When the pause in the conversation hung a few moments too long, Thierry laid his hand lightly on Hannah's arm. "I think," he spoke more to her than the other two, "that's it's been a long day. We'll all be much more sociable on some sleep."

"Right," she agreed. "There's nothing to say that we can't tomorrow." And the truth in that statement rekindled her smile optimistically.

"She'll be staying in her room, I gather?" Thierry directed the question in Ash's direction.

'My room?' Marianne mouthed incredulously when she managed to catch the ash-blond vampire's eye.

Ash shrugged wordlessly, untroubled, before giving an affirmative to Thierry. Then he reached out a conciliatory hand to Hannah, "No hard feelings about the 'lady' thing?"

"None." Her hand slid into his, shook it firmly once. "But I won't take back what I said about your singing. Not after that time you drove me to Santa Barbara."

Ash opened his mouth on a retort, thought better of it, and dropped a brotherly kiss on her forehead. "Good night."

Thierry observed the affectionate gesture neutrally, not appearing jealous in the least, secure of his standing. Marianne, however, did not fare quite so well. Maybe it was the offhand, habitual quality of the motion on Ash's part. Maybe it was the fact that Hannah took the kiss for granted, only frowning faintly as she murmured a grudging "'Night." There was no justice in the world for Marianne; nothing between herself and Ash ever came that simply. Everything from the moment they'd met had some price attached, a give-and-take of tremendous proportions. Really, everyone she had met thus far appeared to have a more comfortable connection with him than her, a mixture of warm exasperation and fondness that was present in every face: Mark, Rowan, Kestrel, Jade, the witch at the front gate, Hannah and Thierry. Being Ash's friend seemed to be a far more preferable and uncomplicated arrangement than her inconvenient existence as the love of his life.

She mumbled an unconvincing parting thank-you to Thierry before Ash's hand closed around her wrist, guiding her around the couple to the central staircase. Behind them, Hannah shifted closer to the older vampire, stretching up to whisper something indecipherable in his ear. Thierry's laughter followed her upstairs.

Marianne was soon distracted from her gloomy thoughts though by the sheer enormity and extent of Thierry's house. Within five minutes of leaving their hosts, she was thoroughly disoriented, so it was for the best that Ash was moving ahead of her with casual confidence. Practice, she assumed, was needed to navigate these halls. She was immeasurably pleased when Ash finally selected a door, seemingly at random from the myriad of others she had seen, because her pulse was quick and her breathing was shallow with the physical exertion of traveling the mansion.

_And exercise,_ she decided. _Practice and plenty of exercise. Everyone in living this house must be in fantastic shape._

Ash twisted the doorknob, the door swinging inward, and Marianne, peering around his shoulder, caught a first glimpse of 'her room'. She gasped and stumbled a few steps inside. High ceilings, thick carpeting, a king-sized bed scattered with pillows and insulated with more blankets than necessary, handsome old-fashioned bureaus and a few upholstered chairs, along with a writing desk, a walk-in closet, and another door that doubtless led to a private bathroom. All completed by a window and cushioned window seat looking out over the back of the house, so far out that she could see the desert beyond. And there was a wholly lived-in feel to the room, knick-knacks plopped down on almost every flat surface, a picture frame on the bedside table, astronomy posters plastered here and there over the attractive wallpapering, all having belonged to someone at one point.

She twisted back around to face her escort. "Ash."

But he wasn't listening. He was staring at her and through her at the same time, marveling over the curiously hollow space suddenly enclosing his heart. It had been years since he set foot into this particular part of the Descouerdres home. Once, he and Mary-Lynnette had shared the space during any and every break she had from college, and there had been a time when both their possessions had dominated the room, dirty laundry and magazines and term papers. And after that, he had spent those weeks recuperating here, isolated in grief and illness and mania. And the year beyond her death as well, when he had worked himself feverishly into a perpetual state of exhaustion, too drained to recognize the bed he was falling into. But eventually he'd hit his limit, and when he'd finally slowed down enough to see around himself, he'd packed up everything of his, leaving all her belongs undisturbed, and removed himself to the opposite end of the residential wing.

Now, with her standing once more in those familiar surroundings, it was an odd sort of homecoming.

"Ash," she said again, more insistently to catch his attention. "I can't stay here."

"What?" His eyes snapped into attention, focusing on her. "What do you mean?"

"I can't sleep here," she was adamant. "It's too _big_."

"Oh." The alertness flowed out his shoulders, replaced by lazy indifference. "Well, unless you want to drag your mattress into a closet, this is as small as they come."

"Are you sure there's nothing smaller? I don't mean to complain--it's great, really--but it's so...large. It even _echoes_. Like some sort of cave, or something--albeit a nicely decorated cave. I'd just be too nervous to fall asleep in a place like this."

"If it would make you feel any better, I could offer to stay here with you and stave off the loneliness."

"Drop dead," she snapped in automatic response to the smirk in his voice.

He spread his arms in an elegant shrug. "Undead vampire," he reminded her sweetly. "It's doesn't work that way."

"Nothing a few pencils can't fix." She swiftly grabbed hold on the edge of the door, hurriedly shutting it in his face, and successfully gave herself the last word in the conversation. It was a handy trick that she would have to remember in the future.

* * *

Over the next day and a half, the mansion was inundated with new arrivals, the mismatched group that had once formed the core of Circle Daybreak flooding back to welcome one of their own home. James Rasmussen and Poppy North from Maine. Thea Harman and Eric Ross left behind their veterinary practice in Washington long enough to show up for a few days. Gillian and David. Maggie and Delos. Quinn and Rashel all the way from Boston. Jez and Morgead. Blaise Harman. The co-rulers of the shapeshifters, Keller and Galen Drache. Iliana Harman--which was a unusual surprise in itself; all the witches' Inner Circle had been killed in the War, and the slight blond now shouldered the burden of complete leadership, which rarely left her time for socializing with the rest. It had been over three years since the entire group had been together all at once, and that had been for a national conference of Circle Daybreak, when innumerable strangers and delegates had surrounded them. This was a much more personal gathering. 

Ash and Marianne scarcely had any time apart from the others during this invasion; sometimes they exchanged a few words when within the larger group, but more often than not someone or other was demanding Marianne's whole attention. Moreover, the return of Ash's soulmate had coincidentally fallen at the same time as the summer solstice, and the whole household was in a frenzy of preparation for the yearly celebration. Which was exactly the reason that early in the afternoon of her second day at Thierry's, all of the female guests had congregated in Marianne's room, a situation that sounded far more crowded than it actually was.

"You'd think," Iliana's voice fluted out of the closet, where she and Gillian were rooting through the contents while Marianne looked apprehensively on, "that after nearly a quarter of a century of women coming in and out of this house, we could at least found something decent for you to wear."

"If not here," Gillian added helpfully, "than maybe in one of the other rooms."

"Is this really necessary?" the younger girl asked again, shifting her feet so she could see past the two blonde heads to the growing pile of rejected clothes beyond. "I mean, I really don't know all that much about witchy things. Maybe it would be better if I didn't go at all."

Iliana, pausing in the middle of examining a patterned skirt, pressed her lips together and shook her head. "Probably not a good idea. Someone's bound to be insulted if you don't come."

"Witches are highly traditional. Everything has a certain place in the world and everyone is expected to respect that," Poppy contributed educationally. The redhead was currently sprawled upside down on the bed, flipping through a magazine without actually seeing the pages. "And breaking that tradition is practically the only thing that manages to upset a normally very tranquil people. They might cast a curse on you or something." She lifted her eyes, looking directly at Marianne for the first time. "Who knows, they might even turn you into a toad."

Marianne opened her mouth but no sound made it past her throat.

Gillian managed to grin and appear frustrated simultaneously. "Don't worry, Mare. We don't actually turn people into toads."

"Don't let them intimidate you," Blaise crooned from her pose in the window seat. "It's not anywhere near as serious as they're making it out to be. It'll be fun, I promise. Witches may have a reputation for being tree-hugging peace lovers, but if there's anything we know how to do, it's how to throw a party. We have a party for practically anything you can think of."

"Celebrations," Thea corrected her cousin with long-suffering patience. "We _celebrate_ the cycle of the year, the life and death and rebirth of the Goddess. And we don't have one for _everything_. Actually, there's only eight major holidays in the calendar: Imbolc, Beltaine, Lughnasadh, Samhain--"

"Arbor Day," Rashel Jordan quipped from her perch in one the chairs. The warrior had long ago resigned herself to her vocation as a member of the 'damn Daybreakers,' but that certainly did not mean she had given up her prejudices against witches.

Thea continued her list as if she hadn't been interrupted, "--the winter and summer solstices, and the autumn and spring equinoxes. Well," she rushed to amend her statement, blond eyebrows drawing together, "we don't really celebrate the spring equinox when we're in Thierry's home."

Marianne's interest had been drawn away from the closet by the exchange, and she sat down on the bed, the shift in weight on the mattress causing Poppy to bounce. Then, she asked the one question all the rest were dreading, "Why?"

Several of the faces looked ashamed, and no one dared to speak, all staring warily around them as if Thierry was going to materialize at any moment. Definitely a taboo subject.

After a lengthy pause, Maggie valiantly spoke for the entire group, "The spring equinox was the day that Maya bit Thierry and made him a vampire."

"He did end up finding Hannah in the deal, but..." Iliana began, and then trailed uncertainly to a halt.

"But," Jez completed the thought for her with a wry smile, "all things considered, the equinox doesn't bring to mind any warm, fuzzy memories for him."

"Yeah," Marianne agreed gravely. "I doubt it would."

A solemn silence enveloped the room oppressively as they each mediated on the unimaginable trials of Thierry and his soulmate, until the question that was plaguing Marianne compelled her to speak up at last. "Who's Maya?"

Keller flashed her white teeth in a fierce smile, "Don't they teach you kids _anything_ in school nowadays?"

The assembly of women dissolved into laughter, sober mood broken, glad to turn their thoughts away from the past to their much more pleasant plans for the future and the impending Midsummer's eve.

* * *

Who knew that so many people read the author's notes? Thanks so much to those of you that reassured me about the mood of the last chapter, and I want you to know that _all_ of your reviews brightened my day! 

**Charlotte-**The part about Delos just came to me as I was writing, so I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with the rest of the Wild Powers. But I do know that Delos won't be the only one that experienced consequences from the war. I think that was the point of that passage--to show that to win Circle Daybreak had to suffer first. And I'm glad you got a laugh at Ash's expense. =)

**fate22-**Not blood--ice water. I swear. She's such a prude. But that's why I think that she ended up as Ash's soulmate; if she wasn't so immune to his charms, I doubt the poor vampire would ever get any rest. ;)

**incarnated-soul-**Aw, shucks. Thanks so much for all your compliments! And you need not be concerned about Ash, I am promising you here and now that he'll get his happy ending.

**tanya-**I love repeat reviewers! And I'll give you a tiny, tiny hint--it won't be too many more chapters until Marianne gets her memory back.

**Aglaia di Willow-**To put concisely what I told fate22, Marianne's **_stark raving mad_**. (For more thoughts on this subject, see my response to fate22.) And it doesn't make you a bad person, because that would mean _I_ was bad person for imagining him those situations in the first place.

**abbi-**Hi! Thanks so much for reviewing. Hopefully this chapter gives you a happier feeling than the last.

**Sparkling Cherries-**First off, my thanks for all your praise! I can't get enough of that. =) And I want to let you know that you're not alone in wishing Ash was real. Sigh. Well, one can dream, can't they?


	6. Girl Talk

**chapter six**

Thierry rented out an entire section of the dining room of one of the local restaurants for Midsummer's night, but there was nothing extravagant about the action--it was simply a necessity. There were plenty of clubs in the area that catered specifically to Night People, and for every one of those there was one exclusively for their human counterparts, but there was no place particularly designed for both to coexist. And considering their party was largely composed of mixed-species couples, there was nowhere they could have gone publicly without drawing a considerable amount of negative attention. So, a screen had been constructed to cordon off the group from the rest of the customers, and despite plenty of curiosity over the personage who warranted such special treatment and several pairs of prying eyes, they remained generally undisturbed.

Thierry had also requested the establishment's most discrete server for his table, but their waitress seemed more distracted than anything else. The tall, brunette human had yet to make eye contact with anyone.

"I'll have the filet mignon." Quinn snapped his menu shut, offering it up for her to take, and she grabbed it robotically.

"And how would you like that cooked, sir?" The woman's voice was pitched perfectly, lightly pleasantly while remaining impersonal.

"Rare."

The relatively uncommon request caught her interest for possibly the first time that evening, and she paused in the middle of jotting down his order to glance askew at him. "Are you certain? You do understand that the meat will come out rather red and bloody."

"Trust me. I'm sure." Now she was looking at him fully--really _looking_ at him--her whole concentration absorbed. Quinn was undeniably striking; with the appearance of eighteen years, he was trim and compact, dark hair balanced with his pale skin, and unfathomable, lightless eyes. The only thing he was not was human. The whites of her eyes showed all the way around as recognition settled into her expression.

Quinn flashed her a slightly mad, but nonetheless radiant smile.

"Of course, sir," she stammered, dazzled and a little fearful, before assembling as much of her dignity as possible and moving on to the next seat.

Rashel cast a sideways look at the vampire and handed over her menu as well. "Sounds good. I'll have the same."

"Rare?" the server inquired mistrustfully. She was examining the other woman now with the same thoroughness she had Quinn. At forty-two, Rashel was still lovely, body athletic and toned, blazing green eyes, with only a handful of silver strands beginning to weave their way into her dark hair. But she was also positively human, and while Quinn's order could be excused, hers was suspicious.

Rashel grinned, a smile that was not nearly as blinding as her soulmate's but still as intimidating, and tossed in an indifferent shrug for good measure. "Sure. Why not?"

A ripple of laughter ran through the other spectators at the table, and the waitress colored, flustered by the exchange and embarrassed by the attention. But as she continued her orbit around the table, she never again forgot to meet anyone's eyes and she swallowed all comments over unusual orders.

Four seats away from the former vampire slayer, Morgead had kept Marianne engaged in animated conversation through the entire incident. "'Wolf took 'em clean off," he was recounting proudly, proffering his left hand--the one with only three fingers remaining--for her inspection. "I didn't feel a thing."

"Morgead," the redhead at his other side reprimanded him. "If you're going to bore the poor girl with your tired old War stories, you could at least tell her the truth. Admit you cried like a baby."

"I did not," he censured the half-vampire fiercely, then returned his attention to the younger woman. "She's only upset because there was lots of blood. Jezebel's got this _thing_ about blood. She can't stand the sight of it, it makes her queasy or something."

"You know very well I do not have a _thing_, Morgead Blackthorn," Jez shot back before leaning conspiratorially across him to speak directly to Marianne. "Sometimes," she said underhandedly, "I wish that werewolf had gotten hold of something _vital_." But any credibility her declaration had was belied by the way she ruffled his hair tenderly as she drew back into her chair.

Marianne smiled at the two warmly, but her heart had fallen to her toes. They reminded her of--well, nearly everyone else at the table excepting herself and Ash. Soulmates were far too _happy_ by and large; it depressing to be in presence of so many at one time.

At the other end of the table, Ash was surveying the conversation vigilantly, though he couldn't distinguish what was being said. Somewhere in the chaotic process of seizing places around the table, he had been stripped of the seat next to Marianne and elbowed down to his current position next to his Harman cousin Thea. _"You're her soulmate,"_ Poppy had explained sagely as she had jostled him out of the way, taking the opposite side of Marianne from Morgead. _"You get to see her all the time."_

_Huh. Right._

Truth be told, yes, he had _seen_ a lot of her over the past two days, but the trouble was, he couldn't recall the last time they'd _spoken_ to each other. The others had superseded all his claims to her time, and he'd been reduced to a mere bystander as his sometime friends had monopolized her attention.

Which was something that simply did not sit well him, and Ash was not one to be pushed aside so easily. Unfortunately for the Vegas witches, Marianne would not be attending their celebration of the summer equinox as previously intended. He had devised a last-minute set of arrangements of his own, one that would not include any other members of Thierry's circle, though they didn't know that at the moment. Anticipation to be free of the group made him fidgety, and Thea darted curious glances at him as he toyed uninterested with his dinner. He glared back.

Marianne excused herself halfway through the meal and fled to the restroom. Keller, who had also been surreptitiously observing the teenager the entire time she had been in Thierry's home, cast a glance in her soulmate's direction. Galen smiled encouragingly and his telepathic voice disturbed the surface of her thoughts with the gentleness of a spring breeze, _You have my permission. Go on. Have a girl talk._

Keller snorted, directing a glower at him that said she certainly did not do 'girl talk,' pushed her chair back, and trailed Marianne at stalking distance. She stopped a moment at the bathroom door, listening, but she didn't bother to knock before barging in.

Just as she had suspected, Marianne hadn't darted in here to use the facilities. At the moment, the young girl was standing in the middle of the tile floor in front of the sinks, her body wracked in two different directions as she struggled to decide whether to make a dash for a stall or casually pretend to wash her hands. But when she registered Keller instead of some absolute stranger, some of the panic drained away.

"Hey," Marianne greeted her with surprising steadiness. "You won't tell anyone, will you? I needed some time away from of all of that," she fluttered a hand vaguely in the direction of the others. "It's still a bit overwhelming, all of those people who I'm supposed to remember, all talking to me, all wanting something from me." Which wasn't _completely_ a lie.

"As long as you don't tattle on me, either," Keller agreed as she moved further into the room. She braced her hands on the surface of the sink, back to the mirrors, and hoisted herself up to perch on the counter. Marianne stayed in her location across from the shapeshifter, but she did allow herself to lean back against the wall in a more comfortable stance. "I know these people, I care about them--heck, I've even _lived_ with them--but I still need a breather once in a while. I'm not naturally a very sociable person. Being around lots of people makes me nervous." She gave a thin, dry smirk and shook her head slightly. "I know, I know, not a very leader-ly admission. As ruler of the shapeshifters, I'm expected to be present at regular public functions, but that doesn't mean I'm never intimidated." Unconsciously, the hardness melted out of her gray eyes, replaced by dreamy fondness. "Galen says he thinks I've gotten better at it over the years, though…_I_ think he's wrong--not to mention biased."

Keller looked to Marianne to share her humor, but the girl's face was caught in a pensive expression that Keller could already recognize after two days, so often had she already witnessed it. Seriousness slipped back into her demeanor. She had come in here to unearth the dilemma that had been upsetting Ash's soulmate, after all.

"But I get the feeling you don't know what I'm talking about at all," she said, tone grimly soft. "Because they don't really make you uncomfortable. In fact, you like being around us. Which makes me wonder what's truly bothering you."

"I--" Marianne was scrutinizing her exit longingly.

"I could there before you," Keller warned gently. "It's probably best to just say what's on your mind."

Marianne's hands curled at her sides. This was the much hoped for and dreaded chance to unburden the leaden load weighing in her chest. Maybe it was for the best that she wasn't given a choice in the matter because she probably would have bolted otherwise. She closed her eyes and drew a calming breath. "What's it actually like, Keller?"

The question rocked Keller off balance, and she nearly tumbled backwards into the sink, but her exceptional reflexes corrected the momentum so that Marianne never even noticed the movement. "Hmm?" she managed to sound unruffled, though her heart was racing, preparing for the inescapable. "What do you mean?"

"What's it like when you find your soulmate?"

"Oh, um…It's not something that you can put into words that easily. I guess it's kinda like being hit by a train--no, more like _knowing_ you're about to be hit by a train. It's inevitable. Unavoidable. But usually a lot more pleasant than being run over by a large moving vehicle." Apprehension was written in the lines wrinkling her forehead. She was curiously aware of exactly where this conversation was leading. "But it's different for everyone. You know how it is."

"Do I?" Keller got the impression that Marianne didn't see her anymore. This was something she had to talk herself through. "Sure, everything seems right, but sometimes I think that some cosmic force majorly screwed up. I mean, we're all _wrong_--wrong species, wrong age, wrong temperament. The soul's the right one, the vampire's right, all the right sparks are there, but something's missing. Something just doesn't click. I thought we were typical soulmates when it was just the two of us, but now that I've seen the others, all I know is that we're not like them."

Keller could have sworn. How had things gotten so out of hand so fast? In under a week, all of Marianne's fears and uncertainties about her new state of affairs had been allowed to fester and inflate to the worst possible conclusions, and in that time not one person had thought to sit down with her and set her straight? Well, seeing as Ash was clearly preoccupied with his own issues over his soulmate's return, that left Keller as the nearest available source of advice and comfort.

Which didn't bode well for poor Marianne.

"Personally, I don't see the problem," Keller interrupted, and Marianne blinked, becoming aware of her companion again. "Ash has been staring at you the whole night."

"Not _at_ me. Over my head, at the people around me, anywhere but me. It's obvious how uncomfortable I make him. He's not the same person where I'm concerned, and sometimes I think it would be easier on us both if I simply disappeared off the face of the earth."

Keller made a derisive noise. "Say that to his face and see what his answer is."

"But that's part of the problem--I haven't gotten the chance to. The last time we really got a opportunity to talk was two days ago…and I slammed a door in his face."

"All right, so communication's an issue, but that's nothing that can't be fixed."

"That's only the beginning of it. We're not as close as the others are, not as affectionate. Sometimes he forgets, but more often than not he goes out of his way to avoid touching me…And he hasn't kissed me, which I understand is normally a essential to being soulmates."

Keller gave a short bark of laughter, the sound echoing in the small room. "If that's all that's bothering you, I wouldn't worry too much. You're a modern woman, Marianne--show some initiative, take advantage of _him_. And viola, problem solved."

"Please, don't make fun of me. It's much more complicated than that from were I'm standing."

"I'm sorry," Keller sobered. "I know it is." She pressed two fingers to her temple, mentally reviewing the conversation, analyzing probable solutions. "Okay, so we've gone over everything that's wrong, but there has to be _something_ that's gone right. Tell me something good, something you liked."

"He made me pancakes. That was…nice."

"Pancakes," Keller said blandly. "Right." There was that nagging urge to laugh again. "We can work from that."

Marianne's lips twisted into a humorless smile. "I never thought that I'd ever have a relationship based solely on pancakes." A strangled sob escaped her throat despite her efforts to stifle it, and she looked terrifyingly close to tears.

Keller felt wretched, praying passionately that Marianne wouldn't cry, because she knew she was lousy at offering comfort, and if the younger girl did break down, she may not be able to give the compassion she deserved. Keller was the mother of three young children now, and those children loved their mother, admired her, emulated her, but when they had a scraped knee or some other grievous injury, they went to their father. She wished vehemently Galen was at her side now to give her advice, women's restroom or not. "Hey," she murmured in her most soothing voice. "It's going to be all right. It's only been five days, after all, you can't expect miracles."

"It doesn't matter." Marianne _was_ crying now, and she mopped furiously at the tears tracking down her cheeks, trying to banish them back where they came. She had escaped to the bathroom to let go where no one could see her, and being so exposed in front of Keller was humiliating. "I get the feeling that no matter what we do, this story just doesn't have a happy ending."

Keller was off the counter in one leap and across the floor in two steps, tugging Marianne into a tentative hug. Just because she was no good at giving comfort didn't mean she was completely devoid of maternal instincts. "Don't say that," she whispered fervently. Each sob shook Marianne's entire frame against Keller's unyielding body. "Don't cry. Please." She was so _young_, Keller realized with a little bit of astonishment, so much younger than Keller had ever been at seventeen. "There's a saying that, if you're not happy, then it's not the end." Keller imagined her own daughter in the same situation and drew Marianne closer, reconciled with staying that way until she wept herself into exhaustion.

And all the while, she entertained vicious images of pummeling Ash simply for being the source of this heartache.

ººº

Keller opened the door to the restroom, stepped outside, and nearly collided with Ash. He caught her by the forearms and set her firmly back on her feet.

"I can explain," he said guiltily. "I was just--"

"Save it," Keller snapped irritably. She brushed off his hold and reached behind her to push the door closed, hoping that the girl inside hadn't heard his voice, and knowing at the same time that she undoubtedly had. "I don't care." Keller moved to sweep past him, then remembered the crumpled expression on Marianne's face, and gave into her impulse, swinging out an arm to catch him sharply in the shoulder. "Idiot," she snarled.

"Ouch. What--" But Keller was already striding away out of earshot. He watched her go, examining the sore spot where the blow had landed, mystified as to what he had done to deserve it. He shrugged his shoulders, shaking out the pain, and turned back to the door he had been about to approach a moment before. Lifting his hand, he rapped lightly on the wood.

"Marianne?"

"Go away." Her voice was muffled, but not only by the door between them.

"Mare, it's me, Ash."

"I know. Go away."

He rattled the doorknob. He had no intention of barging in on her, but he was not surprised to find it had been locked behind Keller. "C'mon. I want to talk to you."

"Really. That's funny, because _I _don't want to talk to _you_."

"I'm serious. Please come out."

"Why should I?"

"Because I don't like talking to doors. Especially ones leading to women's restrooms. And because people are starting to stare at me."

"Good. It serves you right."

"Sweetheart," he said with devastating patience, "did I do something wrong?"

"No. Whatever gave you _that_ idea?" The eye roll was implied.

"If I did something, you could at least have the maturity to come out and discuss it with me face to face."

"I'm a teenage girl, Ash. No one's ever accused me of being mature before."

"All right. You don't have to be mature about it, then. Just, if you're going to throw a temper tantrum, wouldn't it be oh so much more satisfying to come out _here_ and yell at me?"

"When will you get the picture? Maybe I will come out if you go away."

"Too bad. I'm not going anywhere until I see you."

"Stubborn _leech_."

"That's right," he drawled. "_I'm_ the stubborn one."

"Why won't you leave?"

"Why? Because I've been waiting all night for a chance to get you by yourself, that's why. If you come out, we can go somewhere private to talk. I really think we need to talk."

"I don't want to go anywhere. I'm having a great time here."

"Honey," the endearment turned suddenly sour, "if you're having such a fan-_frickin'_-tastic time, why are you in the bathroom crying?"

"I am _not_ crying."

"Marianne, I know what you think of my intelligence, but I'm not that slow on the uptake. I can hear you."

"So maybe I'm crying a little. It's only because I'm so happy."

"You're happy," he echoed hollowly. "Then why can't you come out and talk to me about it?"

"Because you wouldn't understand."

"_Because I wouldn't_…" He slammed his fist into the door, his full preternatural strength behind the blow. Wood splintered and the whole structure rocked on its hinges. Inside, Marianne gasped. His knuckles were bleeding, and he was having difficulty controlling his breathing, the air whistling sharply between his teeth. He shook the doorknob with more violence this time. He could have broken the lock easily if that had been his aim. "Damn it, Marianne. _Let me in_."

"No," her voice quavered with an emotion that sliced unceremoniously through the cloud of his fury. Fear. Sweet Goddess, she was afraid. Of him.

The tension drained out of his muscles and he leaned his forehead against the door. "I'm sorry," he said haltingly. "I shouldn't have lost my temper like that. It's just I'm so…_frustrated_."

"The feeling's mutual, let me assure you."

"Marianne…" he pleaded. "I didn't come to argue with you. I…I wanted to give you a gift."

There was a pause on the other side, then the door opened a fraction, and her head appeared. Her eyes were red and wet. "You wanted to give me a gift?" she asked skeptically.

"Yes, Goddess help me. Thierry and the others will be leaving soon to go to the Vegas witch coven's Midsummer celebration. I didn't think you were the dancing around fires and collecting herbs at midnight type, so I had something else planned for us."

"Really?"

"Yeah. It was supposed to be a surprise, but I guess that's out of the question now."

The rest of her emerged from behind the barrier. Her face had gone an equally vivid shade of red to match her eyes, an acute mixture of evaporating anger and embarrassment. "Ash, I'm really sorry. I'm such an idiot sometimes. And your hand, you're bleeding--"

He waved his good hand dismissively to cut her off. "It's nothing. Already forgiven. Just--wipe your eyes, okay? I hate it when you cry."

She laughed damply and scrubbed at her face with the back of her hand. "Thierry's not going to be very pleased when he learns he has to pay for the door along with dinner, is he? And they probably won't ever let him back in the restaurant again. All because you and I can't go anywhere without making a big scene."

"Oh, don't worry about it. I'll just tell him the truth--that it was all your fault."

"Was not."

"Was so."

"Was _not_."

"Was _so_."

**

* * *

**

**tracing-tt** (tanya!)- Your review definitely gave me confidence to write this chapter. I think that it might have more dialogue than all the previous chapters combined! But knowing you approve of how Ash and Mare interact with each other, I wasn't nearly as nervous about how it would turn out

**incarnated-soul**-Thanks for the advice, and I promise that last scene with all the woman together will be the only one of its kind. I just wanted to show Marianne briefly as part of the larger group. But it _was_ a horror to write!

**enchantednight84**-Thank you, thank you, thank you! Keep enjoying the story, and I'd love to hear from you again!

**Aglaia di Willow**-Plot? What plot? Where? You mean there's more to this story than just a blatant showcase of everything Ash?

**Charlotte**-Oy, I can certainly sympathize. But thank goodness for Labor Day and three day weekends and the breaks they give poor, overworked students. Not to mention the updates they bring!

**fate22**-I'm so relieved you approve of Hannah and Ash. And I promise to put your characters right back where I found them when I'm done borrowing them. ;) Anyway, as to Mare's parents, they went away because the author thought it would be easier to deal with one seriously distressed aunt than two seriously distressed parents. And because a lot of L.J. Smith's characters seem to be orphans or only have one parent. Have you noticed that? But there will be a brief mention next chapter about how they died.

**annonymouse**-Cute name! And thanks for the review. It's good to know that there are people out there discovering and enjoying this story. Shamefully, I have to admit that this chapter is probably the last showing the developments of the War--Delos's arm, Morgead's fingers, it was all just meant to reinforce the fact that it wasn't a total victory for the Daybreakers. The rest is more focused on the changes in Ash and Mare's relationship, which I do hope you'll find equally interesting! :)


	7. Desert and Starlight

A/N: Not entirely certain why it took me so long to find this story again. Hopefully, you'll find some foregiveness for me in your hearts.

**chapter seven**

"Where are we going?" The headlights swept away the night in front of the car, revealing only infinite stretches of asphalt and desert. Desert. It was the only thing Marianne had seen rising and rolling by through her passenger-side window for so long, she had begun to believe the entire world was composed of nothing but desert and starlight and the soft drone of Porsche's engine. And Ash.

"You're determined to spoil my fun, aren't you?" The lights from the instrument panel cast eerie, dancing shadows on his handsome face. It was a poignant reminder that he was above all else a creature of the darkness. He _belonged_ in this twilight world.

Regret was stirring painfully in Marianne's thoughts. Hannah and Thea and Poppy would certainly be disappointed in her for missing the Midsummer celebration. How would she ever explain this, how could she possibly make it up to them? She could barely rationalize the decision herself. Maybe she deserved to have the witches curse her.

"I haven't seen any signs of civilization for over half an hour. I'd just like some reassurance that we're going _somewhere_." The pangs of her conscience made her tone sharp.

"Never fear, we're going somewhere."

"That's not funny. I want to know where you're taking me."

"Please," there was a pleading note in his voice she tried to ignore. "I don't want to ruin the surprise. Just trust me. We're almost there."

"Where? We can't be going _some_where when we're in the middle of _no_where."

"Peace, woman," he beseeched. "Leave it be, for my sake."

"Ash," she warned, "I'm only going to ask one more time--"

"Somehow I doubt that."

"--_where are we going?_"

"No, you're not going to threaten me. I'm not telling."

"That's not a threat. A threat is if I said that if you don't tell me on the count of three, I'm going to open the door and jump out of the car."

He snorted. "You wouldn't."

"One…"

He glanced warily sideways at her. "Stop it, Mare. We're almost there, I swear. Calm down."

"Two…"

"You're insane, do you know that? Why do I put up with this kind of abuse?"

"Thr--"

Ash rotated the wheel to the right and the car drifted into the emergency lane. Marianne gripped the door handle fiercely, her bones rattling, as the low-riding vehicle bounced agonizingly over every rut and pebble. When they finally ground to a halt, she allowed her head to fall gratefully back against the seat.

"We're here," he announced with an expansive gesture.

She craned her head around to get a glimpse of outside, hoping vainly that some mirage had emerged from the empty desert. No such luck. She collapsed exasperated into the leather headrest. "There's nothing here."

"That's the point."

She was suddenly, excruciatingly aware of the fact that she was alone with Ash in the middle of desert, miles outside of Las Vegas. She was sincerely regretting leaving the safety of Thierry and the others now.

Raising an eyebrow, she asked, "What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"You'll see."

He unfastened his seatbelt and opened his door, proceeding to slide out of the car, but when she undid her own seatbelt, he made a hasty motion to stop her from following him. "No, stay there. Close your eyes, and I'll come around and get you."

"Close my eyes?" she parroted incredulously. "Ash, in case you haven't noticed, there's nothing _to_ see."

"That depends on your point of view," he retorted enigmatically, before adding encouragingly, "Go on, close your eyes. I still want this to be a surprise."

"Have I told you yet that I don't _like_ surprises?" But she obeyed his instructions anyway. Behind her eyelids, she held the image of his face as she had last seen him, eyes bright and sparkling with excitement, much like a little boy on Christmas morning. Except he wasn't the one getting gifts, he was giving them.

She stretched her other senses, listening for the sound of his feet rounding the car, feeling the chilly air hit her side as he opened the door. One hand wrapped around her upper arm, guiding her out of her seat, while the other slipped over her eyes as reinforcement. He maneuvered her a few steps forward, and she felt the change beneath her shoes of road to sand. His hands dropped away.

"All right, you can look now." She opened her eyes, and the first thing that filled her vision was Ash, his head tilted back, staring above them. She followed his eyes out into the night to the brilliant, gleaming stars crowding the sky. "Merry Midsummer, Marianne."

She chewed uncertainly on her lip as she tried to decipher this particular present, the car ride and the desert and the stars. "You…want to give me the sky?"

"Not just any sky. This is ten times clearer than anything you'd get in the city. Have you ever seen anything like this?"

Memory shifted, conjuring images of life before the car accident and Aunt Cindy's house in San Francisco, when she had lived with her parents in Kentucky. There'd been nights like these then, skies like these, but she'd left that in her past a long time ago. Yes, she'd seen stars as bright as the ones overhead, but she didn't want to hurt him by admitting the truth.

"It's beautiful," she murmured in agreement. She slanted her chin back until her neck protested, broadening her view like she could soak in the heavens in their entirety. She set about picking out the constellations that any child knew, Orion and Cassiopeia and the Big Dipper. Silvery light filtered down, unadulterated by the interfering lights of the metropolis, cool as the air against her skin.

His eyes strayed, gazing at her, and she made a deliberate effort to hold herself very still under his scrutiny. She heard his intake of breath and waited for him to speak, but he broke off abruptly, striking a palm against his forehead. "I almost forgot. Stay here. There's something I have to get out of the car."

"More?" she queried, but he was already jogging back to the Porsche, unlocking the trunk and extracting a blanket-draped object. He returned, plucking off the covering in one grand tug, and deposited the telescope between them, using his heel to nudge the tripod into place.

"It was yours," he explained, making one last adjustment so the telescope balanced upright.

"Mine?" Her voice snagged oddly in her throat.

"Yeah. You loved the stars." He glanced up, away from her. "You taught me everything I know."

She reached out reverently to brush the dark, glossy surface of the cylinder, but his words were echoing uneasily in her ears. "Ash," she whispered with desperate gentleness, "this isn't me anymore."

"Would you believe me if I said I know that?" His eyes were still fixed on that point beyond her. "I won't lie---at first, I didn't understand. I thought somewhere, somehow, something had gone wrong. But lately you've helped me recognize things I never knew about myself before. You changed…but so did I." His eyes flickered back to her face; they were holes in the fabric of the universe, darker than the night itself. "It's a law of physics, after all--for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You're my reaction. My reflection. For everything the War and those years by myself altered in me, you transformed just as much. And somehow we're still perfect a match--soulmates." He ran a hand over his hair, his dry laugh filling the silence. "Does that make any sense?"

"Actually, it makes a whole lot of sense. But it doesn't explain why you brought me out here. It doesn't explain the telescope."

"Because _I_ like watching the stars. Because I wanted to share something I care about with you."

She was sure her heart was going to shatter. "Okay. Show me."

His smile lit the darkness, and he stooped down to peer into the lense, tweaking the angle of the telescope until he was satisfied. His hand enveloped her wrist, tugging her down until she was in the same bent position he was. The air hummed with their nearness. "Here." He stepped aside so she could press her eye to the lense. "Vega," he named the dazzling image that spread beyond what the telescope's narrow scope could hold. "It's one of my favorites."

They stayed like that for along time, Ash ticking off directions or moving the telescope himself, while she marveled over the wonders that had thus far been invisible to her eyes. She was so fascinated she barely noted when he crept away some time later to let her explore the cosmos unaided, recovering the discarded blanket and stretching himself out on it. She only realized his absence when she discovered something so magnificent she thought it was imperative that he see it too.

"Come here," she called out, not moving from the telescope. "You've got to see this."

"Mmm," his unintelligible answer came back. "No thanks. The view over here is just fine."

She straightened, distracted from her stargazing. If he had been closer, he probably would have sensed the blood rushing to her face, flushing it an embarrassed red. As it was, he could recognize her bashfulness in her shifting feet, hear it in her timidly mumbled, "Ash…"

Knowing the darkness obscured his expression, his lips curved into a smirk. Sometimes it was too easy. "I didn't mean you--I meant _me_."

"You're vain for a parasite, you know that?" The color in her cheeks was from another emotion now.

His smile widened as he smoothed the blanket beside him invitingly. "Don't you at least want to come over here and see for yourself?"

She made a scornful noise and busied herself with the telescope, but he couldn't help but notice with pleasure how her attention drifted occasionally to the figure lounging on the ground behind her. Eventually, after a sufficient amount of time had passed that it appeared she was acting on her own will, she abandoned the pretense of the telescope and arranged herself very cautiously in the space next to him.

"I want to look at the big picture for awhile," she excused herself.

He didn't venture any smug comeback, just folded his arms behind his head and was silent for several minutes. "It makes you feel so small, doesn't it?" he said unexpectedly then, waving a hand at the endless dome arched above them. "Puts things in perspective. Even immortality pales in comparison to something that…_vast_."

Her eyes settled intensely on the side of his face. Discomfited, he fidgeted and rolled onto his side to face her. "What--"

But his question was interrupted as she lunged forward to kiss him rather ineptly, mashing her lips inexpertly against his. Their noses bumped clumsily, their teeth scraping together roughly. And before he could even conceive of reacting, she skittered out of his reach.

Marianne giggled, clasped a hand over her mouth, and laughed again. Her situation was only made worse by the expression of bewilderment and insult marring his features. "I'm sorry," she schooled her voice to be serious. "It's not you, I promise. It's just…Is it always that _awkward_?"

Comprehension shifted his face, his expression becoming something more…_predatory_. His hand located the dip between her hip and her ribcage, skimming down her side to the small of her back, his fingers applying a tantalizing pressure. The wordless message was unmistakable: _Come closer._

"It doesn't have to be," he answered her gravely as he drew her irresistibly against him. His mouth grazed the corner of her lips, then stopped without warning as he slanted his eyebrows mockingly at her, an afterthought occurring to him. "Well, if you do it right, that is."

She might have been offended if she hadn't been so preoccupied with keeping her breathing even. She tangled a hand in his hair, tugging his head back down insistently, intent on finishing what he had started. His laughter over her impatience was muffled as their mouths converged.

And soon, he wasn't laughing at all.

ººº

_"I'm offering it to you freely, Ash." Her neck was inclined at an awkwardly painful angle so she could look sideways and up at that beloved face. The bindings around her wrists stung where they had scraped the skin raw, and her body was an oddly burdensome weight that she would have loved to be rid of._

_"What if I offered you my blood? You need it much more than I do. I'm the immortal one, remember?"_

Not immortal enough, _she reflected regretfully as she took in the distinct protrusions of his bones, the wildly ravenous glint in his eye, his own blood dried where it had coursed from a slash to his chin. "Semi-immortal. Not invincible. You still have to feed. And I happen to be, well, _prey

_"Stop it. Mary-Lynnette--"_

_She wished desperately that he wouldn't make this decision any more difficult for her. She was offering up her life to see the person she loved survive, and as worthy a cause as that was, if he delayed her much longer she was bound to lose her nerve. "Don't you get it yet? I do this, or neither of us leaves alive."_

_"Fine. I can live with that."_

_"The point is, you won't _live _with it because you'll be dead. Dead _dead_. Vampires don't come back, idiot. _Poof. _'Out, out brief candle,' and all that. I at least have some chance of coming back." _

No. _Absolutely not. Give me time to think of something, and I'll get us both out of here." Of all the times to be arrogant and self-assured, this was certainly not the best, but she heard the echo of her own hopelessness and gentled her tone in response._

_"We don't have that kind of time. You don't even have the power to contact Thierry or Quinn telepathically. No help is coming until this battle's over. _I _can give you that power, I can change that. Now's no time to be valiant and brave and…and pig-headed. We have to face facts. You have to live. And I--" Fear clogged her throat. "I'll be back."_

_"What, no Shakespeare, no Austen? You have to quote _The Terminator _at a time like this?"_

_"I'm tired. I don't want to fight. Not now. Not anymore." _Please, God, Goddess, Whoever, _she added the plea silently, _let me have him back and I swear I won't ever argue with him again. I won't lock him out of the bedroom or throw things or call him an idiot. If I get just one more chance, I won't ever take him for granted.

_"I love you. Don't leave me."_

_She would have given anything to touch him at that moment, but instead she was forced to reach into her memory for something to say. "'Were a star quenched on high, for ages would its light still traveling downward from the sky, shine on our mortal sight. So when a great _wo_man dies, for years beyond our ken, the light _she _leaves behind _her _lies upon the paths on men.' Longfellow. "_

_"That's not comforting."_

_"You asked for a quote, not comfort." But she couldn't have denied him anything, not at a time like this. And the truth was, she needed the consolation just as much as he did._

_"Now?" He had never agreed to her proposal, but he didn't need to. His eyes were an uncanny silver even in the blazing brightness filling the room, his fangs already extended over his lips. They both struggled within their binds to find a position that would facilitate the process, and she braced herself for the feel of his teeth in her throat, reminding herself it hadn't been painful last time. But he held himself immobile a few moments too long, and underneath his gaze her courage was waning. She didn't _want _to leave him._

_"You're taking too long." _

_He lurched shakily forward, and the air was snatched unceremoniously out of her lungs. But in place of his teeth, his lips brushed her throat, coaxing it into a more natural position. And only then did he bite her._

_She was engulfed by the brilliance of his mind, but the experience was spoiled by the relentless litany of his guilt._

Shut up, Ash. You're ruining the moment.

ººº

Everything about the dream was too vivid, too intense, too real. Marianne wrestled against the grip it had on her mind. She didn't want to see anymore, to know anymore. It was trying to take her farther than she was willing to go, to show her things that were better left unknown.

"Shhh," Ash's wordless reassurance wafted to her through the dissipating fragments of the vision. She opened her eyes and distinguished his shadowy figure bent down to her level, his impossibly dark gaze fixed on hers with concern. He had the passenger door of the Porsche open, and he was leaning across her lap to unbuckle the seatbelt. Behind him the silhouette of Thierry's mansion loomed up in the darkness.

"Go back to sleep," he commanded soothingly. "I can handle everything from here."

She blinked, readjusting herself to her new surroundings, and was startled when tears she hadn't realized were suspended there slipped loose.

Ash looked just as taken aback, and his thumb moved delicately across her cheek to the corner of her eye, seeking to stem the flow. "Sweetheart?" The question was in the words he didn't say.

She forced the corners of her mouth to mobilize into a small, heartening smile. "'S okay," she mumbled sleepily. "Just remember to put me in my own bed this time," she reminded him, belatedly recalling his habit of stashing her territorially in his room. Not that she would have been particularly adverse to the idea tonight--which made it all the more imperative that she did not wind up there.

He laughed softly, the sound barely making a dent in the night's hush, and his hand traveled up to brush a strand of hair off her forehead. Lips briefly replaced his fingers, chaste and achingly sweet. "I'll keep that in mind." His arms slid smoothly underneath her, one supporting the back of her knees as the other coiled around her shoulders, and he lifted her effortlessly free of the car.

She snuggled into his chest, yearning to be closer, and his arms gave accommodatingly, allowing her to nestle so near to him that Marianne was sure there was no room for even the air to come between them. Beneath her ear his heartbeat was steady, and the rhythmic intake and exhale of his breathing rocked her almost imperceptibly. The tempo and surety of his life pressed beneath her fingertips sent an upwelling of peace flooding over her and propelled her back to brink of sleep.

It was good to be home.


	8. Good Morning and Goodbye

A/N: Finally, what you've all been waiting for: the end. Sorry for the long delay, but hopefully you'll accept this extra-long final chapter as part of my condolences. And once again, you all have my eternal gratitude for your support and your unfaltering patience―this is for you.

**chapter** **eight**

She dreamt of the stars, but they weren't the stars, not as she knew them. They were too big, too bright, and intoxicating. She felt the harsh, constricting burn of smoke in her throat, and she dreamt of flames devouring the sky. And Ash. Always Ash.

_**"You know, somebody told me this would happen."**_

_**"That you'd come to a hick town and chase a goat killer?"**_

_**"That someday I'd care for someone―and it would hurt."**_

°°°

She entered consciousness slowly, cautiously, like a swimmer adjusting to a frigid pool one section of her body at a time. She wiggled her toes. She lifted one knee. She shifted her hips, easing out a discomfort in her back. Her awareness settled on an unprecedented heaviness in her chest. The space around her heart was oddly swollen, full and at the same time alarmingly raw; it wasn't the most objectionable feeling in the world, but neither was it the most comfortable. She squirmed, trying to dislodge the sensation, but it wedged more stubbornly into place.

She recalled the face her mind had so recently been projecting on the backs of her eyelids and, unnervingly, she wondered what he had done to her over a mere handful of days that she was so vulnerable, so susceptible to all his charms, even in his absence.

_So you love him. _The declaration was unpredictably frank and terrifyingly obvious. _What now?_

Good question. She took a long, still moment to ponder it. Ultimately, it came down to a fifty-fifty toss up between kissing him and staking him.

Her stomach rumbled in protest, driving her to distraction, and she decided to leave heavy thoughts for after breakfast. She sat up in a leisurely fashion, in no hurry to go anywhere. She opened her eyes, blinked sluggishly. And then she stopped. The excessively spacious room was illuminated with golden light spilling from the window facing the desert, but at the same time it was filled stars. Galaxies, nebulas, dwarfs, giants, solar systems, maps, charts, posters, photographs.

Nothing had been touched in this room in two decades. A shrine, a temple, an offering. A testament to a love that had once been real, living, breathing, beating.

Gathering her balance, Marianne gingerly stood on the bed, reaching up to brush her fingers against a poster plastered over the headboard. It was cool to the touch, glossy and sleek. She had always loved the night, for as long as she could remember. She had admired it from the last streaks of sunset to the first gray-blue tones of dawn, the way it enveloped her in its cool embrace, the way it shielded and covered and revealed at the same time, its freedom and danger, its calm introspection. But she knew next to nothing about the stars. She was a city girl, after all.

She had entertained all sorts of outlandish fantasies last night in the dark and the desert. Her future had been one of opportunities. But she realized with a sinking feeling that they were dissipating now in the daylight, narrowing her options significantly.

There was an old desk beside the bed boasting a framed photograph, and there were even more snapshots scattered in odd corners of the room. All, in some way or another, showed the same man and young woman. Two people she knew well, and that she didn't know at all.

You only had to look around the bedroom to know it. Someone had loved Mary-Lynnette very much once. Still did. And Marianne hoped that one day someone would love her just as much.

But that day wasn't today.

Food would wait, she resolved as she tugged on a pair of jeans that were, and at the same time were not, hers. She hurriedly brushed her teeth and ran a hand through her hopelessly tangled hair. She took a deep breath and a long look at herself in the mirror, desperate to separate herself from the girl whose presence pervaded this place. Her, but not her, an imperfect reflection. Yet she could find nothing in the mirror that showed any distinction between the two, and a bolt of fear and panic sliced through her.

_Marianne_, it had become a chant. _Marianne._ She gathered her identity around her as much as she could, her dignity, armor and shelter. It was a long, long walk to the opposite end of the residential wing, and she had to stop several times to ask directions from passing strangers. She wondered, belatedly, if first she should have gone to someone with perspective on these kinds of things, maybe a friendly chat with Hannah. But she didn't want consolation, she wanted confrontation.

She finally found his door, paused in front of it, steeling herself to knock. And then she chose not to. She simply put her hand on the door handle and turned, startled a little to feel it actually open at her touch. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. She had expected Ash, with all of his hyper-senses, to detect the moment she entered his room, but he was still slumbering blissfully unaware as she approached the bed. She sat tentatively on the edge of the mattress, and being wholly unacquainted with the methods of waking a sleeper, particularly one of the vampire persuasion, she acted on her first impulse: she stuck out a finger and poked him once, hard, in the calf.

For all his feline grace, he did not, in fact, land on his feet. He cascaded off the bed in a tangle of comforter, sheets, and limbs to land with a very solid _thump_ on the cold floor. To his credit, however, he was poised in fighting stance in the next breath, eyes an unnatural silver, elongated teeth indenting his lower lip, muscles rigid.

She should have been horrified. Terrified. Instead, she was fascinated. She had never seen his fangs before.

She could almost see the thoughts clicking in his head, the procession of them parading across his face, through those eyes. The instant alertness was replaced by wariness as he analyzed the situation, then swamped by confusion and a short period of contemplation as he recognized his surroundings, where and _who_ he was with. The tension eased out of his body all at once, leaving behind a lazy, indolent housecat.

"Oh." He slumped, bonelessly graceful, into the bedraggled pile of blankets that had accompanied him in his tumble. "It's you." His eyelids drooped closed. "Should've known," he muttered, barely audible.

"Um, good morning," she mumbled, now more than slightly embarrassed. She allowed the moment to lapse into silence as she concentrated on rediscovering her resolve of a few minutes before. "Ash," she whispered. No answer. "Ash, we need to have a serious conversation."

A mild curse. "No, _we_ don't." His voice was firmer than one would expect from someone most of the way asleep. "_We_ had a late night. _We_ will be more agreeable to the idea in a few hours."

"All right, then." It was not, despite all appearances, an admission of defeat. She drew her knees to her chest, hugging them closely in the cradle of her arms. "_I_ need to have a serious conversation."

One eye popped open. It was an astounding sage color. "Well, I suppose that's different."

She bit her lip, rolling words around in her mouth, but none of them were right, none of them would ever be right for this situation. "I'm going home."

The other eye opened. There was enough light edging between a break in the curtains that she could see his jaw clench. He wanted to tell her no, but he wouldn't because he was too proud for that…and possibly because he understood.

She choked on that. His understanding made these things even harder to vocalize. It would have made a world of difference if he had been stubborn or obstinate or defiant, if she could have felt righteous indignation. Instead, his silent acceptance drained the steel out of her; she felt frighteningly limp and pliable. She was reminded inexplicably of the first night she met him. The look in his eyes. Hungry and fearful and unspeakably fragile. _Please don't leave_. He wouldn't dare say that to her now, not with the week's worth of barriers he'd constructed. It was almost heartbreaking to admit to herself that he wouldn't show his pain again so easily; he would rather let her go than humble himself a second time.

She had the urge to throw herself into his arms, to allow him to make her over into what he needed her to be. She would have surrendered her sense of self to ease that ache in the wounded hang of his head. But, no, she couldn't live with herself in that kind of deception, not even to make him happy. She was intent on doing exactly what he had begged her not to do: leaving him―for now. And the very most she could do was soften the blow.

She slid off the bed, onto her knees, kneeling not so far away from him, close enough to reach out and touch him if she only had the nerve. "Ash," she said, and the syllable was so tender it tore her throat. "Ash. This is going to sound so stupid―it already does―but I don't know any other way. I'm not worried anymore that we weren't meant for each other, but that doesn't magically erase everything else. I―I feel like I'm actually falling to pieces, like I'm fractured into a million little bits. I need some time to straighten out what parts of me are _me_ and which are her, Mary-Lynnette. I need to figure out how to make us one person again. And you. You, too. You can't treat us as separate people, either. You can't love her like that and…and still have room for me."

Denial blazed swiftly in his eyes. "But I―" She clamped a hand a little savagely over his mouth, desperate to stop the flow of words there. _But I love_ you.

"Don't. Just don't. I don't want you to regret saying it when I'm gone."

He shook his head fiercely free of her hand. "I wouldn't." The statement was a challenge, tempting her to test him. "I couldn't ever."

"Alright," she sighed, somewhat uneasy at how effortlessly he exposed her. "_I_ don't want to regret it when I'm gone." She cast her eyes up, searching out his in the semi-darkness. "You have to believe this isn't easy."

"Trust me, I know." He sat back, his shoulders scraping against the wall she had inadvertently backed him up against. There was a charged silence, and then he said, "You're leaving me," as if it had only just occurred to him.

"Yeah," she answered hollowly. "I think that's what I said."

He made a noncommittal sound. "I don't suppose you'd want me to drive you back to San Francisco, would you?"

There was a small bubble of panic in her chest. She could just picture it: hours cooped up in the car with Ash, then standing on the front step of her house struggling to find the words that meant goodbye. There was too much risk that she might just change her mind. "No. No, we can't."

"That's what I thought." He rose nimble as ever to his feet, and by the time she had scrambled to her own, he had already crossed behind her to the bed. She stood uncertainly where she was, locked in place, as he dug around his nightstand. She heard the distinctive chink of metal on metal. "You're going to want these, then." He turned, and dangling in his hand was a set of keys.

"Your keys?" she whispered with a small twinge of anxiety.

He glanced at them as if they might have transformed in his grip. "Yes," he reaffirmed. "Those would be my car keys."

"But, Ash―"

He held up a hand to block her protest. "You have to take the Porshe. You have to. It wouldn't be right to let you leave without doing anything―even if it means I'm helping you get away from me."

"I can't―"

"Think of it," he interrupted impetuously, "as seventeen years' worth of overdue birthday presents." He extended his hand, keys laying in his open palm in offering.

She laid her own hand over his, her fingers curling around the chilly metal and around the warm flesh of his palm, and the accustomed shiver ran through her as they touched. "You idiot," she said, but there was nothing harsh about the word; it was almost an endearment. "You're not listening to me. I'm trying to tell you I don't know how to drive a stick shift."

He blinked, and a devilish half-smile played on the corners of his mouth after a brief moment. "Well," he proposed smoothly, as if he had been prepared for this eventuality all along, "I guess that means you'll be staying another day so I can teach you."

She looked at their intertwined hands, looked at the expression on his features. Perhaps it was the encouragement of the soulmate bond. Perhaps it was the selfless nature of his gift. Perhaps she just wanted to knock that pleased look off his face. She hooked her free arm around his neck and caught him squarely on the mouth with a kiss. She felt him reflexively tense in shock, and she couldn't help the heady rush of power that came with the knowledge that she had the ability to surprise the infamous Ash Redfern.

She was going to miss that.

ººº

One day is by no means an adequate amount of time to learn how to drive a stick shift, but Ash wouldn't have ventured to suggest she stay any longer. Marianne's saving grace was that she had a previous life's experience with manual cars, which provided her with a greater aptitude for it than the average teenager. A _slightly_ greater aptitude. A fact that did little to put Ash at ease, and he had nearly clawed through the dashboard in terror and frustration during their lessons. He cursed whatever rash spirit had goaded him to give up both his great loves in one fell swoop, and he blamed Marianne for ambushing him at such an ungodly early hour. He said a lot of foul things she knew he didn't mean in the least.

Standing in the circular drive of the mansion the following morning, he looked restlessly down on the brunette head of his soulmate. Her suitcase lay between them at their feet. "You're sure about this?" he prodded one final time.

"Not in the least," she assured him in all confidence.

"Then why are you doing it?" He couldn't find it within himself to be annoyed, only tired and resigned.

"I don't know." She shook her head, avoiding his eyes. "Because. Because I don't know what else to do."

"Well," the sarcasm in his voice fell effortlessly into place, "I for one feel infinitely better knowing we've got this all straightened out."

She refused to fall for his diversion. Scary how fast she'd come to know his defensive tactics. "I _am_ coming back, Ash."

His tone drew back away from that bitter edge. "Yeah, but that doesn't do me much good in the interim."

"It'll be good. For both us." She finally glanced up and was ensnared in the bellflower blue gaze already fixed on her. "I promise."

"I guess I'll have to take your word for it." It wasn't exactly a sincere endorsement, but it was the best she could hope for.

Marianne heaved her shoulders in an unthinking shrug, as if she were struggling to lift some weight off them. "I think…this might be the part where we say goodbye." She stuck out a hand in his direction, stiff and business-like.

He stared at the offered handshake, and he had the distinct and wholly unforeseen urge to laugh. His own hand darted out to seize her by the wrist, drawing her nearer without a protest as he bent his head to confer on her the kind of farewell she'd never received before. After some immeasurable passage of time, he stepped back and noted with no small amount of satisfaction the glazed appearance of Marianne's eyes.

"Ash," she said in a distant voice, as if she were laboring to return to herself from a long way off, "you have to let go."

Which was not at all what he had expected to hear. "What?"

"You have to let me go," she repeated more firmly.

Her arm twisted a little in his grip, drawing his glance downwards. "Oh." He regarded his own hand still clutching at her wrist as if it belonged to a stranger. "Um." His fingers relaxed their hold, his arms falling away uselessly at his sides. "Goodbye, then."

She shifted uncertainly on her feet, looking up at him, then back over her shoulder at the mansion rising over them, before finally stooping to seize her suitcase. He realized belatedly that it would have been gentlemanly of him to offer his assistance with such things, but he could only watch helplessly rooted in place as she swung her luggage into the passenger-side seat. She crossed to her own door and settled herself inside, adjusting seatbelts and mirrors busily, too busy to succumb to the desire to look back at the vampire standing motionless in the driveway. She paused to check the position of her hands and feet, clutch and brake, steering wheel and gearshift, and to catch her breath. Slowly she started up the car, and even more slowly she shifted from neutral into first gear, but for all her caution she didn't cover much distance before the engine stalled and the Porsche ground to a violent halt. She jumped a little with embarrassment and more hurriedly repeated her earlier motions. She glanced once into her rearview mirror to gauge Ash's reaction to her misstep, and she held onto that vision of him as she drove away, his face twisted curiously with a mixture of anguish and exasperation that only she seemed capable of evoking.

She was going to miss that, too.

ººº

Cindy was leaning against her kitchen sink washing dishes when she heard the front door open to her San Francisco home. For one breath, she stood very still and let go of a silent, relieved sigh, before picking up another plate and dousing it in soapy water. Perhaps a different kind of parent or guardian would have flown into hysterics or a fit of rage, but she comforted herself with the rhythmic, mindless motions of household chores. She had, after all, been expecting this for several years now, ever since she first heard Marianne talking in her sleep. Cindy had the advantage of age over her niece, and a sound enough memory to recall a time towards the end of the War when a captured Circle Daybreak vampire named Ash Redfern had dominated the nightly headlines. Whereas Marianne had once attributed him to an overactive imagination, Cindy had known all along that Ash had truly existed and that one day he might return to sweep away her surrogate daughter. Her one concern was that this had all happened far too soon.

There were several thumping noises in the hallway, then the pattering sound of hesitant footsteps on the kitchen tile. Cindy took her time in turning away from her work, leisurely wiping her hands dry on a dishtowel. She took in her niece from head to toe in one swift, appraising glance, not missing the expression in the girl's blue eyes.

"A vampire, huh?" was all she said, sympathetically, and she opened her arms to the child she had raised as her own.

It was the compassionate tone that undid Marianne, its implicit promise of understanding and comfort. She flew to the shelter her aunt offered, throwing her arms tightly around the older woman, her anchor in this world that was so suddenly incomprehensible and full of sorrow. And if she cried over an arrogant, problematic blond bloodsucker who was foolish enough to allow her to get away, then no one knew that but Cindy.

ººº

Ash was doing eighty-five on the highway, but he felt as if he were standing still. Everything in his life was standing still, waiting on something to jolt it back into motion. He had come to impasse. He had nothing, no emotion, no clue, no sense of direction. He didn't know where he was driving to, only that it was away, away from this place. He hadn't even bothered to pack a bag―he had all the necessitates stashed in houses all across the continental United States―or to say goodbye to any of the Circle Daybreakers visiting the Descourdes mansion―there were too many of them and so little left of his patience. The only thing he carried with him was a memory, a girl telling him he had stop seeing her as if she were two different people.

He'd been wrestling with that accusation for quite a while. It just didn't seem fair; he'd been at his very best, his most optimistic, in accepting the differences between Mary-Lynnette and Marianne, but it hadn't been good enough. Now she was demanding that he do the exact opposite, expunge them all from his mind as if they didn't exist, as if the past had never happened.

She was infuriating. Incomprehensible. Intolerable.

Funny, he mused, how much things change and how much they still manage to stay the same. There are just some patterns in this universe that show up over and over again, like that puppy that follows you home from school one day. She still drove him mad, in all the bad ways―and the good, too. She kicked his shins and called him names; she quoted him Shakespeare and Austen; she held him warily at arms' length, and then she drew him close when he least expected it; she made his blood boil and his reason foggy and his heart race; and he was helplessly in love with her in spite of everything.

In fact, he supposed he might have had some doubts that she was truly the reincarnation his soulmate if she hadn't asked him to let her go yet again. If she hadn't have pushed him away just as they'd finally had a breakthrough in their relationship, if she hadn't needed her space, her time to grow into understanding―well, then, she just wouldn't have been herself.

Herself. The idea stuck.

He jabbed the breaks abruptly, maneuvering the car in to the gravel path which transversed the grass median dividing the two side of the highway. He ground to a full stop, craning his neck to see traffic coming from the opposite direction. Performing a U-turn on a busy interstate―it was a stupid move, reckless and irresponsible, not to mention illegal, but that had never stopped him before.

And none of that mattered because it was obvious that he wasn't going to get anywhere headed in the direction he had been. He wasn't going to make any progress forward until first he had gone back. Back to Las Vegas, and even further than that.

ººº

The school year opened as it always did, and Marianne tried to pretend that nothing had happened between the end of the last and the beginning of this one, but it was a constant struggle to fit back into her old skin. She was not the same person, but neither was she the only one to notice this. Whatever else had followed her home from Las Vegas, she had gained a new, mysterious aura of someone with a secret which lured others to her, and the once shy, reclusive Marianne Pierce now found herself at the center of a new troupe of friends. She never sat up alone on Saturday nights pining over a certain vampire because she never lacked for invitations to escape her house and her thoughts.

Christmas break rushed in faster than could be expected, and the season found her unexpectedly on the opposite coast. To both their genuine astonishment, Marianne had accepted Mark's offer to visit with his family on a whim, and Mark had been overjoyed to welcome her into his home. To avoid any undue confusion with his wife, however, the two agreed to introduce Marianne as a long-lost cousin, some distant relative of his mother's who was conducting research on the family history. And two days after Christmas, Mark and his family loaded Marianne into the car with a heap of presents, an abundance of warm good cheer, hugs from the children, and an open invitation from Kari to return anytime she wanted.

On the ride to the airport, the former siblings sat still and quiet, not so much awkward as at a loss for words in this peculiar situation. As the road brought them closer to the airport, though, Mark cleared his throat, trumpeting his words. "There's something else. Something that I couldn't give you in front of the family. It's there, on the back seat."

Marianne directed a quizzical glance at him before she twisted in her seatbelt, stretching for the simply wrapped package, and pulled it into her lap. She traced the path of the ribbon, savoring the moment, before she tore it open. There was an old family picture album inside, but more than that, there was piled on top a small twisted, partially-melted piece of metal that had been salvaged from an old station wagon.

"It's stupid." Mark kept his eyes set on the bumper of the car in front of him, and his words were short and clipped, just how they always were when he was uncomfortable. "Who wants a piece of old junk, right? But I kept for a long time. It was kinda a good luck charm. Superstitious, I know. But I almost lost my sister―I almost lost you that night. I needed to commemorate that. And when I really did lose you…well, it was a reminder to carry with me. Now that you're back, I figure you need it more than I do."

"Not stupid," she countered softly, a slight smile transforming her features. She turned the metal over in her hands, appreciating its texture, its weight, and the love it represented. After a long stretch of time, she brought herself to ask the question that had been dogging her the past week. "Mark…how much does Kari really know?"

"Enough." The question had if anything made him more uncomfortable, but there were just some stones she could not leave unturned. "As much I could tell her. She knows about Jade. About you and Ash―and how you died. About Rowan and Kestral, too. But those other things that happened that summer, the murder and soulmates and dead goats and all that crap, I don't even think the six of us will ever understand it."

"Does it ever bother you?"

His eyebrows drew together in confusion. "What, the dead goat?"

"No." She shook her head. "I don't know. I don't know what I mean. Me, I guess. You've created this wonderful new, _normal_ life for yourself, and here I am. An anomaly of nature, something that shouldn't exist. And I've brought back all these terrible things with me."

"No, Mare. There's nothing to regret." He reached over to give her hand a quick squeeze. "You're my sister."

If anything, the encouraging statement made her heart sink lower. "I'm not, really. I'm not the same, I won't ever be." She turned in her seat, fixing her eyes on his profile, eyes that felt suspiciously damp. "Mark…when you look at me, do you miss Mary-Lynette?"

He glanced sideways, a bit taken aback. "Well, sure. But I miss a lot of things. I miss Jade. I miss the house in Briar Creek and the hill. I miss the old high school. I miss that kid I was. Jade, that house, me, we all still exist, but I can't touch those things we were in the past. I miss the way they are in my memory, but that doesn't stop me from moving on. I like who I've become, and I love you, Mare. I don't expect you to be the same or to pick up right where we left off, not with all that's happened, but you're still my sister―you've just grown up a little, that's all." He grinned, and the mood in the car shifted away from the serious. "Or maybe you've grown down. I'm not sure which."

They hugged before he saw her off at the airport, and they both pretended there weren't tears in their eyes while they made promises about regular e-mails and plans for next year's vacation. She had high hopes for what the future would bring.

At home, Marianne uncovered an abundance of letters and packages awaiting her arrival. Christmas cards from all over the country, and gifts, too, small mementos she had left behind over the years with Thierry's inner circle that were being returned to her in the same fashion as Mark's present, all of which she added to the growing knowledge of her past life. She had been amazed by how many new friends she had acquired over the span of a few months, but she was completely staggered by the number of _old_ friends she had suddenly acquired as well.

Ash, it seemed, understood her need to distance herself from their situation better than she could herself. There was no word from him, no card or letter or phone call. He didn't materialize on her doorstep to whisk her away as she sometimes allowed herself to imagine.

But then again, maybe her Christmas present was a little late in arriving. The papers for the Porsche arrived in January, signed over to her as the official new owner. She thought more than once about selling the car and buying something more her style; the Porsche was flashy and impractical and occasionally temperamental. But it reminded her inexplicably of its former owner, and she couldn't bear to part with it.

ººº

The door opened and a slim female inched cautiously around it while steadying her burden. "I thought you could use this." Hannah deposited another cardboard box on the bed. She hadn't exactly been invited to help him in packing up Mary-Lynette's things, but she figured Ash had never _un_-invited her either. This was simply one of things that as his friend she couldn't allow him to suffer through alone.

"Uh, thanks," he replied, somewhat distracted by maintaining his balance on a chair as he pulled down yet another poster. Task completed, he descended back down to the earth, and his gray eyes regarded her expectantly as she wavered from foot to foot, waiting for her to exit the way she had entered.

Something which she was not about to do. To make this more apparent, she took up a position on the bed, shoving aside some boxes of clothes and knickknacks to make herself more comfortable. A picture on the bedside table that had not yet been packed away caught her attention, and she bent forward to snatch it up. She silently traced the figures in the photo with her fingers as Ash heaved a sigh at her intrusion before folding the poster into the empty box.

"It's kind of unnerving," her voice interrupted the quiet, almost too loudly after the hush. "She looks exactly the same as she used to. If you left this picture here, I doubt she would even notice."

Wordlessly, Ash procured the picture frame from her hands, and Hannah made room beside her for him to sit on the bed as well. She watched him as he stared at the picture, and she got the distinct impression that he was no longer mentally in the room with her, but she spoke regardless. "But you'd know the difference, wouldn't you?"

_Wouldn't he?_ The answer was still yes, but not for the same reasons it used to be.

In those years after the War, when he was at his worst, he would picture Mary-Lynette as he remembered her, tough and resilient, poking a finger between his ribs and chiding him to grow up and get over himself. He'd left his image of her just as untouched as her room, cherished and sacred, but what he'd never grasped is that those events that changed his life would have transformed her just as much if she had lived. And they _had_ changed her. Marianne was everything that Mary-Lynette would have been had she the chance: she was more insightful, more sensitive, she knew when to respect his silences and when to offer comfort. Mary-Lynette would never have punished him for his pain, and Marianne was proof of that.

Ash leaned across Hannah and set the photograph back in its rightful place of the nightstand. This was not a parting with his past, but a coming to peace with it. It was essential that he cease to separate his life into two distinct periods, separated by a single experience; instead, his life had been a gradual progression that had produced the man he had become. He did not have to give Mary-Lynette up any more than he had to let go of the memory of the person he had been when he first met her. He only had to recognize that the transition from Mary-Lynette to Marianne, too, had been a natural development.

He could memorialize the version of the woman he had loved in his youth, but Marianne was the only version of that woman he could love in the present. And that was all Marianne could have wanted him to discover in their time apart.

Her room would be finished within the next hour, put into storage or donated to Goodwill, and soon enough it would be time to pack up his own belongings.

ººº

Spring break found Marianne lying on her back in the scraggly grass of a hill in Briar Creek, Oregon, in the company of a barefoot vampire. She was more interested in scratching at a bug bite on her leg, though, than she was in gazing at the stars, and her thoughts were too heavy to allow for anything else, anyway. She and Rowan had just finished reconstructing the events here during a summer some two decades ago, from both Rowan's recollections and her own slivers of memory, and now she turned the tale over in her mind, filling in the gaps in her consciousness that had haunted her for so long.

Rowan was absorbed in her thoughts at the same moment, quietly contemplating her departure from Briar Creek. Either she would have to allow herself to start aging again, or she would have to inconspicuously disappear from Burdock Farm as her sisters had in years past, before the locals became suspicious of their eternally youthful neighbor. She thought perhaps she might find a small place in Idaho, or maybe Wisconsin. She would miss Briar Creek, but the new scenery would undoubtedly be exciting. She imagined herself chasing a quarry through the stalks of a cornfield, and a private, feral smile lit up her features.

"Rowan?" Marianne's voice spiraled out into the darkness. The other woman made an encouraging sound. "Would it have been better if I had allowed him to turn me into a vampire?"

The question was unanticipated, and Rowan paused thoughtfully to formulate her answer. "Maybe," she said at last. "Maybe not. Maybe you both would have died at the hands of the resistance fighters. Maybe you would never have ended up in that cell at all. I can't say anything for certain." The vampire rose gracefully to her feet and extended a hand to her companion. "The true question is would you have been happy? As a vampire? For better or for worse, all he ever wanted was for you to be happy."

Marianne accepted the slender fingers and they aided her to stand herself. "I can't be sure, either." Her mind was at that instant conjuring the images of another night of stars with a completely different vampire. "But I think I'm happy now. Does that count?"

"Yes, it does." Rowan smiled, peaceful. "And I'm glad to hear it." She slipped a lean, sinewy arm around the shoulders of her once and present blood-sister. "Do you want to go see the house now?" The Carters had moved to Florida nearly twelve years previous, and the new residents spent half the year away in Arizona, so for the most part Rowan was the caretaker of Mary-Lynette's childhood home. "There's a box of stuff in the basement you never got the chance to come back for. Perhaps you'd like to take it with you?"

ººº

Marianne shut the passenger-side door of the Porsche firmly as she rested a box on the curve of her hip. She took the steps leading up to the townhouse in Old San Francisco with extreme care, conscious all the time of her precious load. Reaching the door, she leaned the weight partly against the house as she fumbled with Ash's keys, one of which she was sure opened the front door of Thierry's house. She caught a hold of it and jiggled it into the lock, awkwardly juggling her burden as she swung the door open.

A pair of hands relieved her of box. Marianne didn't jump in shock, nor did she utter a sound. It was almost as if she had been expecting him the whole time. He hadn't been among the procession of Circle Daybreakers mingling with her human friends at her graduation ceremony or at the party afterwards; no, it was almost as if he had been waiting here for her, away from the crowd, to give her his private congratulations, in this the place where it had all begun.

She swiveled slowly to face him, and even prepared as she was, the sight of him compressed her lungs, tightening the sore spot around her heart. She had missed him, of course. Everyday, everywhere. He was part of her, after all. But she was proud of him for having the courage to set her free to her own devices. She had discovered the arduous trials of a knight-errant―or really, a lady-errant―out in the world, but she knew from experience that sometimes it was more daunting to be the one left behind, the one left waiting with no guarantees.

He dropped the box as their eyes locked, the box of tokens from her past life that she had been so painstakingly accumulating over the past school year. The box ruptured on impact, the contents spilling over the porch, some of them caught up by the wind. But none of that seemed to matter very much in this moment. There were other places she carried Mary-Lynette with her.

He caught her up in his arms, and she buried her nose in his collarbone. The normal 'hellos' and 'how-are-yous' were lost in the intensity of another greeting as he drew her face to his. She had deconstructed everything she had ever assumed true about herself, and she had spent the past year reconstructing a new identity for herself, but she had never felt so whole as she did engulfed in his embrace. Another revelation to add to all those others she had discovered in the space between the first time she had entered this townhouse and this time.

She released his lips, but she was hardly ready to release him. "I can't believe you dropped my box." She hadn't really intended the first words out of her mouth to be a scolding, but it seemed only natural once she had spoken.

He shook his head, blond hair splaying across his forehead. "Doesn't matter. I'll buy you a better box."

"What if I don't want another box?"

He laughed out loud and cradled her a little closer. "Marianne," he said a bit breathlessly, as if he were on the verge of some great breakthrough. "Do you know what this means?"

She was certain he was no longer talking about the box, but about them, here, standing entangled on the threshold of the townhouse, and she glanced up at him under her eyelashes, perplexed. "I have no idea."

A smile carved its way across his face, and it was the kind of smile she would be glad to spend years examining the nuances of. "Good―'cause neither do I."

END.


End file.
